Serendipity and missing home.

This is bonus blog! No...there is no prize at the end. No...you don't get entered into a contest just for reading.  And no...there will be no number to call for monetary compensation in the last paragraph...or is there... This bonus is that this blog is a two-fer. I saw something and it made me think of two entirely different topics. Rather than bore you with two blogs, I'm cramming them into this one. You're welcome...

So here you are. This week's entry is about the kite in this picture (know you can barely see it...blame my crappy camera phone!). I was walking home one evening and above me was a reminder of my childhood: a mad bull kite.  A mad bull kite is a homemade kite. You can't go to a store and buy one (or at least, I haven't seen that you can). It's an octagonal kite made from butcher paper to make it durable. It has a hitch in the front to invite air currents and strung across that opening is a flap of paper that loudly announces its presence to other kite flyers. Back home, we would attach razor blades to its tail and have kite battles. Mad bulls are hard to make and even harder to make properly. The skill required to complete one automatically vaulted that boy into the hierarchy of the neighborhood social structure. The kites were dangerous and deadly to other regular kites and I always wanted one. But as I said before, they weren't available for sale and I had just learned how to make a simple kite. Mad bulls weren't in my future.

So here I was on a street in Brooklyn where the tallest structures were multi-family apartment buildings, not trees, with a mad bull kite floating in the sky. It was fluttering loudly above my head, in between apartment buildings and it looked completely out of place. There were no open fields or piers from which to launch its flight. Furthermore, I wondered how it had managed to clear the power lines. I followed the line from the kite and, low and behold, it originated from the roof of one of the buildings! Of course! That's the only way you could get a mad bull up on this street. And that made me realize two things: the ingenious lengths that immigrants go to in order bring aspects of their culture to this land and serendipity. Let's talk about the latter first.

My wife says that I kill people. Now before you go off and call the authorities, let me explain. If I ever, in casual conversation, muse about whether a famous person has died, be assured that if the grim reaper hadn't already visited them, he is on his way to their house! I once told my wife, while at a Yankees game, that the guy announcing Derek Jeter had recorded that intro before he died. Problem? The man wasn't actually dead...then. Three days later he passed away! That happens all the time. I also "talk things up". I'll mention something or wonder about its existence and poof! there is a news report about it. She says I need to talk up some money! And that happened to me with the kite. I had JUST finished reading the chapter in the Kite Runner that talked about the kite fight on the train and I walk out to see this kite from MY childhood flying above me. Ridiculous coincidence or maybe a harbinger... Either way, I wondered if that happens to other people as often as it happens to me.

The other issue is that this kite was flying in the sky at all. Think about it: someone had to have wanted to desperately fly this kite near their home. I live a short train ride from Prospect Park and a bus ride from Floyd Bennett Field, both ideal places for kites. But here was someone who wanted to have this particular experience in this specific place on this day. He or she was going to make it happen then and there.  They took the time to make this kite (a mad bull takes hours to make) and found their way to that roof and just like that, they were transported to their homeland. No passport needed. I see this everywhere. Snippets of a former life, a distant culture burgeoning in the concrete jungle. Hindu worship altars in front yards scarcely larger than the offering itself. Steelbands practicing in garages crammed together in a space like a high school rock band. And the list goes on. We find ways to make this place seem more like home, no matter the inconvenience. To us, it's worth it. It's hard enough to survive in NYC to have to do so without the comforts of home. So we cook meals for 40 people out of kitchens in Queens studios apartments. We do tai chi in Chinatown parks next to drug addicts. And we fly kites from the roofs of Brooklyn apartment building. Don't judge us...we miss our homes.

These are my thoughts...what are yours?

Slow down.

I'm going to make this quick for all you New Yorkers out there. In fact, that's the point of this post today. I just read an article in Time Out New York that talked about being an authentic NYer. One of the things that it talked about is that Ny moves at a very fast pace. In fact, it's manifested pretty clearly in how fast people move while walking. NYers always seem to have somewhere to go or something to do...RIGHT NOW! The article said their you're on the escalator and you're standing not walking, make sure you stand to the right and let people pass. Besides, don't you have somewhere to be? Why are you just standing there!?!?!

The article made me think: is this really true? Are we like sharks: in a constant state of motion? Not literally, of course, but do we move from one thing to the next thing to the next thing constantly? This is not to say that we don't have fun because I'm also referring to those of us who go from one recreational activity to another, like bar hopping. My question is, do we know how to relax? Do we know how to sit and do nothing in New York City...and I do mean IN NYC. I think we're skilled in going on vacation and laying on a beach or in a meadow or on an iceberg (don't think I forgot about you crazy people who miss winter). But do we know how to waste away an afternoon doing nothing without worrying about what the next item on our agenda is?

When I went to the spa I saw guys just laying around. No waiting for their massage time to come up. Just laying around. Not checking their blackberry (ok I mean iPhone or Android. No-one carries a BB anymore) to see if someone is looking for them. Just LAYING around! I was jealous of them. Some of them looked like retirees but some looked like regular working aged folk. As parents it's harder to accomplish this but wouldn't it be great to just not schedule ANYTHING for that day! Nothing. Slow it down to just doing NOTHING for as long as you pleased.

I had a conversation with a colleague and she mentioned that people who migrate to The Apple feel a pressure to experience it all. Her opinion was that when she had a non active day in the city, she felt that she was wasting time that could be spent going to a museum, or to brunch, or catching a burlesque show on floating table on an indoor lake (yeah, that exist! It's New York after all). If that's the case, then people will always be in a constant state of motion because you can never see it all in NYC. It's just impossible. The best you can hope for is to cover most of the times that are important to you and a smattering of things that are outside of your comfort zone. If you try to get to everything, you indeed will never be able to stop and smell the $5 street vendor roses!

The ironic thing is that even though I know this, I feel like I'm in perpetual motion myself! I, as I mentioned, know how to slow down when I'm away but this summer I vow to have some "nothing" days with my wife and daughter and maybe waste an entire day away on Governor's Island or something. Maybe...

These are my thoughts...what are yours?

Which way would YOU run?

There is a new Army commercial (by the way, all military commercials annoy me because they are intrinsically deceptive) where they show a group of soldiers running INTO a clouds of smoke from an apparent explosion. The tag line at the end was 'which way would you run?' and the point was that there are certain people who run into danger to help people or to fight a battle. Those are the people that the Army is saying that it wants in its corps. Well what does that make the rest of us?

In every horror movie, there are people who hear something go bump in the night and, rather than high tail it out of there, decide to go investigate. We laugh at those people for being nosy and usually they are the first people to die in the film! Get away from danger in normally what we think people should do. I am no soldier. I am not a crime fighter. When there is a specter of danger, I run...the other way! The Army does not want me. And to be fair, I don't want the Army either. But does that make me a coward? Does that make me less of a citizen than those people willing to run head long into an ominous situation? Or does it make me smarter?

When the planes hit the towers in NYC, there was an immediate rush to help all of the wounded in the city. It felt like everyone wanted to be a 'first responder'. On that day, I stayed put in Brooklyn and I drove to a pharmacy to get medication for one of my late fraternity Brothers who had gone into sickle cell crisis. That's where I was needed but more importantly, I am not an EMT/firefighter/policeman type of person. Is that a character flaw of mine or am I just a part of a swath of society that needs to exist to complete the Venn diagram for the city? It has always been a point of internal shame for me that when my fellow Greeks were mobilizing in the following days to provide help, that I did not volunteer. It still felt dangerous to me and my instincts told me not to go. As it turns out, the air in that area was toxic and we still don't know what the final side effects are for the people who breathed it in. So was I a coward or was I smart?

Bravery, like people, comes in many forms and it is not always manifested in the physical manner. The commercial seemed to imply that those that ran into danger were braver than those who would run away from it. Even in the school yards when we were growing up, running away had its stigma. Well, here is the difference: I never run away from MY fights. On top of that, I often run to the aid of people and I never use my legs. In society, we need soldiers and fighters and rescuers.  We also need people who will defend their families and teach people and heal those that have been hurt. It takes courage to sit across from a person who has just told you that they were raped by their sibling and are now considering suicide and not run out the door! I don't think any less of those who can't do that because that's my calling. It's not a job for everyone. Just like being in the military is not for everyone either.

I write this primarily because I truly believe that there are many ways to be a good citizen (or permanent resident...don't judge me!) without taking up arms. Very hippie of me to say, I know, but if that time taught us anything, it should be that we should all respect the way each of us decide to live. Furthermore, we have to respect what we each bring to table. Some of us are braver than others but if we were all equally brave, who would be left for us to save?

These are my thoughts...what are yours?   

Sometimes I wonder...

You ever wonder if Sasha and Melia have to clean up behind the First Dog?

Modesty PLEASE!!!

I went to the spa the other day with my wife. There is something about going somewhere where everyone and everything is designed to relax you that automatically puts your mind at ease. Well, that relaxed feeling went away quite quickly at this particular spa and made me pause for a moment.

If you have read this blog before, you know that I did not go to high school in this country. Coming here for college was a bit of adjustment. My friends always joke with me that it couldn't be that rough because my home was an English speaking island which was heavily influenced by American culture. That said, there were some aspects of American culture that were not the same. The list is actually long, and we can go into it another time, but the one that became apparent at the spa was the fact that, in Trinidad, we didn't have communal showers. Translation: we didn't walk around naked in the locker rooms!

This has always bugged me: nakedness in the gym/locker room. I'm not a shy or modest person. In fact, when I was younger, I would be considered an exhibitionist by some people. I have been skinny dipping in college, and when getting a massage, fully disrobing is not an issue for me. So I'm not quite sure why it's an issue in the locker room. Am I now embarrassed by my less than athletic body? (ps. That's what I put on forms that ask about my body type! "Less-than-athletic" sounds MUCH better than FAT, which is what I actually am!) Am I afraid that someone will come over with a manifestation of manhood that makes me feel minuscule? It might have to do with not wanting to have a conversation with a dude while his leg is propped up on the bench that I'm sitting on while his twigs and berries are dangling from his tree!

Whatever it is, I tried to get over it and experience the spa (which was a fully clothed facility once you got past the gender specific areas). My wife and I had a great time that day but that first jarring moment where I had to be in a room filled with naked men took a bit of getting accustomed to. For those of you who are even more modest than me, bring a towel. I wish more men did in the locker room! LOL

These are my thoughts...what are yours?