Marmalade Daydreams

The other night my friend Bonnie challenged me to justify my choice of New York as my home. More than most other native denizens, I have tasted the fruits of other cities, other settings, and have chosen to return here. True, the comfort of having family and friends close by has proven significant in my weighing of options, but, I said, there is something else: an ineffable character in New York's streets, is brownstones, its waterfronts, an energy present nowhere else. Her reply completely ignored my off-guard grasping at straws -- how could the anyone who can afford to live here have time to benefit from the inspiration, this "energy", and produce art? My stoop is occupied by older Carribbean alcoholics who can no longer afford the rents of this gentrifying neighborhood and the materials of their art are cheap enough, at $5 a six-pack -- what chance do the welders, the photographers, the glass sculptors have? I hear the desperate mice behind my bookshelf, chewing on tablets of Pepto-Bismol. Sad.

And as, while we sleep, the stars, exploding Roman candles that illuminate distant worlds, so eager to live that their light, created only via their own destruction, struggles to emerge and flicker through the midnight blue that fills the space between the acid orange halos of the streetlamp's excited gases, we urban-dwellers, children of the Apple, revel in the drops of sweet nectar that descend to our lips through the monotony and the filth; I struggle through conversations with painfully stylish women with whom I share nothing but a seat on the subway; I endure seasons of blind bureaucracy for the sweet months of summer freedom; I withstand weeks of abuse from adolecents for the brilliance of God's gift to the worker ants -- the weekend.

For a well-spent weekend in New York really is justification enough, a sweet carrot to make one forget the sticks wielded by our resident tyrants, from the developers to the homeless. To emerge from the subway at Stillwell Avenue in Coney Island on a beautiful Indian summer Saturday, en route to a seaside game of miniature golf, and to be confronted with this incredibly beautiful and sad mural from another planet, awestruck for the better part of half an hour, speechlessly pouring over the dumpster loads of imagination that poured through the nozzles of spray paint cans, pointing at the dreamscape detail of a fantasy nightmare portrayed in exacting detail, we were shaken from our contemplative solace by the bellowing of an older woman, head wrapped like a Russian peasant, wheeling a shopping cart full of indiscernable rubbish, yelling "BLAA!" -- well, that folks, that right there is worth a kingly ransom in rent. So, I guess live here for the crazies.

2 AM Saturday, I found myself stumbling about the glass and steel canyons of lower Manhattan, when I looked up to behold a perfectly vertical shaft of pure white light uniting the earth and the heavens. This light seized me, transporting me back in time. I was abroad for 9/11 and for nearly a year thereafter; the events surrounding that time have always remained somewhat of an abstraction for me. To tell you the truth, I don't even really remember the towers all that well. Despite being born and raised in the immediate vicinity of New York's orange glow, the World Trade Center has taken on more significance in its absence -- this is where you could have seen the twin buildings looming over the harbor from my rooftop, that is the eerie shudder I get from feeling the thousands of ghosts flutter about Ground Zero (or, as it's been renamed, the "9/11 Memorial Hole"). But, I think, most poignantly, there were the "Towers of Light", two groups of massive spotlights shining from near the footprint of the original towers, forming a sort of Jacob's Ladder, two luminous parallel pathways, a dual proclamation: we remember, but life must go on.

9:03 AM yesterday, to mark the fifth anniversary of that morning, the second plane that everybody else saw live on television -- that day I, in the mountains of India, feared I might never be able to go home again, the first time I'd seriously considered an external threat to our homeland since the death of the Commie bogeyman -- our arch-patriot of an assistant principal, he who doggedly includes the words "under God" in the Pledge of Allegiance every morning, Supreme Court be damned, went on a mini-tirade over the public address system about how this date must never be forgotten, not only for all of the innocent blood shed on that date, for all of the heroic emergency personnel who gave their lives trying to rescue those trapped in the towers, and for all of the volunteers who are now sick from their tireless hours spent looking for survivors, but also for the soldiers who've been sacrificed in the fight against "the enemies of this country". I felt sick myself. I don't mean to to use this blog as a soapbox, but to conflate a 9/11 memorial with justifying America's war in Iraq equivocates jihadists and insurgents, whom, if if both groups of militant Sunnis, remain strange bedfellows, united by misery. After the shortest "moment of silence" I've ever observed, we were led in a rousing rendition of the Pledge of Allegiance, and I stood dumbfounded by the spectacle of my bilingual students, many of whom could not piece together a basic English sentence, mimicking a pledge they most definitely can not understand.

But tonight, coming home after dark from what all agreed was a pointless Open House (a week into school, we don't have a whole lot to say to the parents, and they certainly didn't have a lot of questions for us), I stopped by my local polling place for the Democratic primary, and I was filled with genuine love for my country. People of all ages, creeds and colors filled the brightly lit gymnasium of the local elementary school. On one line, a young Caribbean woman with a baby in a stroller sporting a Marcus Garvey T-shirt waited behind a white lesbian couple and a few men with full beards and Muslim skullcaps. It's a fairly important primary for local politics, as it will probably decide the winner of the Congressional seat that's opening due to our Representative's retirement. And, just to see the people out -- the single moms, the old folks with missing teeth, the businessman in a tailored suit with a walrus mustache and the guy in a pinstriped sportscoat whose unbuttoned shirt revealed a purplish chest and belly covered in fine white hairs -- to see these people and to realize that, despite the Halliburtons and the undying agribusiness subsidies, perhaps the people who make our laws are flawed because they reflect us, well, it made me happy.

As I walked out into the Brooklyn streets, I walked down the sidewalk with an older Bengali gentleman, trying not to picture the 17 skyscrapers that are probably going to be built and turn our neighborhood into Tokyo (according to the Wikipedia entry, if built according to plan, the proposed development will be the most densely populated area in North America). Some teenagers played basketball in the darkened schoolyard by the lights of the orange streetlamps half a block away. An enormous cream-colored tourbus was parked on our corner (across from a rehearsal space that opened last year) and a few guys (who turned out to be in the band Citizen Cope, celebrating the release of their new album and about to go on a national tour) were smoking cigarettes and drinking out of plastic cups. I wanted to stop a minute and talk to them, but my Muslim neighbor was on his way home, so, before parting ways, I asked him what he thought of the election. "It's good," he said, "but too many vote." I guess that says it. If less people voted, maybe some of the candidates I liked would have won -- I guess that's democracy.

Oh, and happy anniversary, Mom and Dad! (30 years!)

I woke early this morning, the first Saturday of the new school year, to the rising sun streaming through my curtain, its orange warmth evoking Monday morning when I danced through the streets of Crown Heights in the first rays of a new day's sun amidst a crowd of revelers, the air a redolent melange of sweet vanilla blunt smoke and talcum powder, swirling about a streaming parade of percussion -- floats of silver spangles with steelpan orchestras, 30 drummers deep; Con Ed workers banging on huge chunks of metal hanging from around their necks; people of all ages marching with snares, blowing on whistles, banging on cowbells and woodblocks. It was J'ouvert (a Creole contraction for jour ouvert -- day opens), the street party which bridges the witching hour to the morning of the peak of Caribbean Carnivals from Trinidad to Brooklyn -- on Labor Day and drawing a couple of million people annually, ours is the last and the largest of the season, and the fervency of its celebration, between the chanting and the drumming and the dancing, the public drinking and drunkenness, the paint-covered people wandering the streets like zombies looking for others to initiate into their brotherhood, the elaborate costumes of sequins and feathers (as well as the African royals and the manikins and the big booty babysitter above), and the baby powder being squirted everywhere, this is my consolation that, yet again, I didn't get to go to Burning Man this year.

And, though I didn't bring my camera, here's some photos that I downloaded from a steelpan websiteto give you all a sense for the craziness. The amazing thing is, despite the massiveness of the actual carnival, I recognize almost all of the subjects of these photos -- at 3:30 am there was only one float running, a Trini steelpan group with their supporters in red, waving flags, smearing red paint on faces, arms, shirts (my companion and I got pretty well worked over); soon thereafter a couple of groups from Grenada got it together and took over with drums and whistles, and the night unfolded from there. Got home by 8, and got a couple of hours of shuteye before a fantastic barbecue on my friend Sol's rooftop (overlooking Eastern Parkway and the parade route, we were subjected to hours of eating delicious food) put an official end to my summer.

On that note, back in the classroom I've realized something about the nature of time -- when put in a steady routine, the days can drag, but the weeks sure fly by. Most of the other teachers I know who didn't go anywhere for the summer, whether working or relaxing, said it flew by. Those who split it up, enjoyed a variety of activities and locales, seem to have appreciated the time more. I can't believe 2% of the school year is already over -- I hope that this routine doesn't eat my precious, precious life... It's good to be back, but I think this is sizing up to be my last year -- the Department of Ed is slowly shutting down our school (Lord knows why -- I think that it's just gotten better and better over the few years I've been there) by giving us less and less students, which means decreased funding. Glad I'm not at the bottom of the totem pole, but I worry for some of my friends's jobs.

My ears are ringing from amazing concert last night (Comets on Fire -- psychedelic metal), my belly is full of yummy frenchtoast and eggs from my local greasy spoon (if you live in Brooklyn's 11th Congressional District and are a registered Democrat reading this before Tuesday, please vote for Chris Owens & Bill Batson in the primaries to fight the hyperdensity of the Atlantic Yards luxury development and keep places like Nick's open), and I think it's time to veg out for a bit and enjoy my Saturday afternoon. Just so long as that doesn't become routine.