Notes from Bryant Park

Manhattan is an unspoilt wilderness of tall buildings. In the midst of this landscape of native species is an art installation of ungainly and asymmetrical sculptures. They are short, which contrasts strongly, almost pathetically, with their surroundings. These artificial structures are called “trees”. They are really striking. I can't stop wondering how someone came up with the idea to interrupt the Manhattan landscape with such an alien species.

We walked through Times Square, where the sides of the buildings are large screens. Everything in Times Square is moving, flashing, fast. When the advertisements in Times Square want to call your undivided attention to their product, therefore, they cannot get your attention with color, contrast, or speed. The only thing they can do that really stands out is... to slow down the film and show the product in slow motion.

A fast-paced society can either go faster and faster until it runs itself into the ground, or decide that speed is outmoded and the hip thing is to go slowly. Rome just kept expanding and expanding until it burst. The advertisers of Times Square have made the wiser choice. I feel like in Times Square I see the future, or the end, or both, of this civilization.

Mine host for this excursion said we must walk past the wax museum, because the statue in front of it looks so lifelike that we would do a double-take.

I did not do a double-take. The difference is that a real human face is more luminous.

The Chrysler building is beautiful, not because its design is inherently beautiful – really it's a bit spiky – but because it is more story than building. That is excellence in architecture. I want to sit here for a long time and read that building.

M & J Trimmings is proof that G-d loves humanity.

New York is a generous city, probably one of the most generous cities in the world. I've always said that I love New Yorkers because they keep up both sides of the conversation. The city is the same: it furnishes you with such diversity of experience that you could live here for a long time before you ever felt the need to become anything. At one point I found myself walking down the street, not because I was headed anywhere in particular, but because the sixteen people around me were walking that direction. With such richness of company, who needs direction? You could easily forget about going anywhere. Every one of those people is a small world in himself; and their histories are diverse. The buildings are richly and beautifully ornamented. You could walk around New York and just admire and admire and admire all its richness and its people for a long time before it would occur to you that you need to have your own life, too. Then you would have this incredible trove of artistic inspiration to draw on.

Even the acanthus on the columns of Bowery Bank is not flora but people: New York's flowers are its faces.

Observations in the park. Skinny artists smiling into their mail the smile of the loved. At their feet, obese pigeons.

Young Italianate men in shirtsleeves and fisherman's caps tossing wooden balls: a scene from a hundred years ago.

As I am making these notes on the passersby I notice that two of them are also making notes on me.

You can see in the style of many buildings that this used to be New Amsterdam. It is Amsterdam writ about ten stories taller.

Grand Central Terminal has a view of constellations on its ceiling. Mine host says that when this ceiling was finished, someone pointed out to the designer that the constellations are shown in mirror-image. “O, yes,” he said, “that was deliberate. It is God's view of the heavens.”

So you can stand at the bottom of this tall hall and look down on the world.

Starbuck's. Q. What is the connection between the noble, self-sacrificing First Mate of the Pequod, and a cup of coffee?

Ruskin says, and I agree, that wrought-iron is suited to sculptures of flora, and to nasty fences keeping robbers out. Wrought-iron fences are not suited to friendly, inviting delineations of space.

The English language is in a fair way to run out of profanity. Those words that were once unspeakable are now commonplace, and there are no worse words lined up to replace them.

Q. Why does the large button sculpture in the Garment District have five holes in it?

In the library, a replica is shown of the pencils manufactured by Thoreau. They don't look like pencils at all – more like glorified twigs. How fitting.

I went into the library, not because I had anything particular to look up, but because I like to browse and admire long shelves of expertise in every conceivable subject.

It is a long climb before you get to the reading rooms, as if the star of the place is not books but stair-steps. In the reading room I saw many people on computers.

“I have a dumb question,” I said to the librarian. “Where are the books?”

She drew from behind her desk an illustration – I guess a lot of people ask the question. “There are seven stories of books under your feet,” she said. They are populated by dwarves. You look in a card catalog, identify the book you want, and send down your request by pneumatic tube. The dwarves mine that book for you and send it up. The stacks extend even under Bryant Park.

(That must be where the trees came from! They sprouted from all the paper.)

You may not look at the books.

Oh. So, for my purpose of browsing and wondering, I went to the room of manuscripts.

You have to buzz in. I buzzed.

The Butler of Manuscripts came to the door. “Yes?”

“Must one have a particular quest in mind to enter this room, or does general interest suffice?”

“It does not,” said the Butler of Manuscripts. “This room is for Researchers.”

I cannot wrap my mind around the New York Central Library. It is the only library I have ever seen where you can do anything but look at books. It is, I suppose, excellent training in focused thought and delayed gratification. You have to first identify your Quest, then the book you want, then wonder and wonder what it is going to be, and know that human labor brought it to you. No wonder 90% of the young people in the reading room are on computers.

It is appropriate, then, that the library's lions are named Patience and Fortitude, since those are what it takes to get a book in the library.

The reserve of the library is in striking contrast to the in-your-face generosity of the rest of the city.

Loops says her favorite thing in New York is the subway, because it is spicy.

Whatever New York is, it is enthusiastically and uninhibitedly – grimy, ornamented. To a certain degree, what Jerusalem is in kodesh, New York is in chol.

New York is like Adar: the chaos of it, the very extremeness of its pratius, points to it not being under the control of any mortal.

The Town Mouse and the Suburb Mouse

The Suburb Mouse grew up in a suburb where computers outnumbered civilians. He was accustomed to living among perfect green lawns and perfectly square houses and one car per human and not much in the way of crumbling Victorian woodwork or burly trees shedding leaves which would turn to mud on the sidewalk.

One day, he overheard the Town Mouse muttering the lyrics of
Little boxes on the hillside
Little boxes by the Interstate
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same
There's a pink one
and a green one
and a blue one
and a yellow one
And they're all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
&c.

and requested a translation.

The Town Mouse explained that this was a song about the suburbs, and that the little boxes signified the identical houses plunked down in perfectly straight lines.
"What's wrong with that?" asked the Suburb Mouse.
The Town Mouse, to her surprise, was hard-pressed to come up with an answer. Was there something wrong with building an efficient but uninteresting neighborhood?

"Anyway, the houses in my hometown don't all look alike," said the Suburb Mouse. "There are four different models of houses, and they are painted in five different colors."
The Town Mouse thought he was kidding. He wasn't.

I suppose (concluded the Town Mouse) that ideally, architecture and city planning should be a positive influence on a city and on those who live in it. Imaginative planning can completely alter the character of a city -- Portland's row of Park Blocks is a classic example.

I guess (said the Town Mouse) there are people who find the suburban aesthetic uplifting, or at least reassuring. Personally I find the old, intricate, and be-foliaged more conducive to keeping my head on straight.

Until recently (reflected the Town Mouse) I did not believe that attractive suburbs exist. But I actually found one the other day, when I was driving around Tualatin and wound up on Tookbank street, and then on Withywindle.

New York hasn't changed much since 1704.

"The city of New York is a pleasant, well-compacted place, situated on a commodious river which is a fine harbor for shipping. The buildings brick generally, very stately and high.... The inside of the [houses] are neat to admiration.... The hearths were laid with the finest tile that I ever see, and the staircases laid all with white tile which is ever clean, and so are the walls of the kitchen which had a brick floor.
"....They are sociable to one another and courteous and civil to strangers and fare well in their houses. The English go very fashionable in their dress. But the Dutch, especially the middling sort, differ from our women...wear French muchets which are like a cap and a headband in one, leaving their ears bare, which are set out with jewels of a large size and many in number. And their fingers hooped with rings, some with large stones in them of many colors as were their pendants in their ears, which you should see very old women wear as well as young.
"...Their diversions in the winter is riding sleighs about three or four miles out of town, where they have houses of entertainment at a place called the Bowery, and some go to friends' houses who handsomely treat them. Mr. Burroughs carried his spouse and daughter and myself out to one Madame Dowes, a gentlewoman that lived at a farm house, who gave us a handsome entertainment of five or six dishes and choice beer and metheglin, cider, etc. all which she said was the produce of her farm. I believe we met 50 or 60 sleighs that day--they fly with great swiftness and some are so furious that they'll turn out of the path for none except a loaden cart. Nor do they spare for any diversion the place affords, and sociable to a degree, their tables being as free to their neighbors as to themselves.
"Having here transacted the affair I went upon and some other that fell in the way, after about a fortnight's stay there I left New York with no little regret."
--The Journal of Madam Knight, Dec. 6, 1704

George Washington's Shoes

I always imagined that the nation's capitol would have a pronounced character, something akin to that of Colonial Williamsburg, with a pinch of Athens, some hubris, and an overwhelming sense of responsibility. It is, after all, the government heart of one of the largest and strongest nations on earth.

When I got there, it seemed to me that Washington, D.C. is not really a city on its own: if you take the average of the rest of the country, you end up with Washington. (To be fair, I was in the tourist area.) One brochure I glanced at made reference to a strong African-American heritage of the city; probably that is what gives it character. But I had not left time to see anything but Georgetown and the Mall.

I mentioned the strange nature of tourist-area Washington to my father-in-law, who attributes it to careful city planning.
In other words, Washington is a suburb at heart.
I take this to mean either that the heart of America is a suburb, or that the Mall is just where all the Federal buildings are parked and the heart of America is really somewhere else.

My first stop was the Old Stone House, which is a nice place to stop into on the way to somewhere else - it is so tiny, and sparse on explanation, that it did not make me as deliriously happy as other Little Old Houses of my acquaintance. But it is a sweet little pre-colonial house, with a nice little garden in which to stroll around and pretend to be pre-colonial. The rest of the neighborhood, Georgetown, has shed most of its old-fashioned character.

Walking from there by way of the Mall, I stopped into the first Smithsonian that crossed my path, the hall of US History. The Smithsonian is not a museum that tells a story; it is a collection of artifacts. I saw George Washington's clothes and camp kit, and Capt. Clark's compass; and, what is quite striking and awful, the great wooden wheel used for the Civil War draft.

My toddler, who is a real people person, was getting antsy with all these things; so I took her to see the famous statue of George Washington as a Greek hero. She pointed excitedly to the part of the statue at her eye level and exclaimed, "Shoes!"
Yes, dear, George Washington is wearing shoes.

When my toddler looks at George Washington, she is excited to see shoes; my thoughts are more sophisticated, but they don't come up to those of a scholar of US history.
It would be a pity to go through life looking at George Washington and seeing only a pair of shoes.
Each in his own way, we allow ourselves to do this. We don't know what we're missing. How many people go through life thinking Judaism is about guilt and gefilte fish?

Duckpond

The approach to Duckpond is beautiful: green fields with white fences, real farm country. And then the mansions appeared, followed by rows of what are popularly called McMansions, each on its perfect green lawn, all made out of brick, with shutters.

The people in these houses were unpretentious, down-to-earth, and exceptionally nice, but we had been staying in large, new houses since we landed in America and honestly, the endless newness and expanse of space was beginning to make me homesick. It made me bizarrely happy to visit a family living in Duckpond in a tumbledown little farmhouse with well-trodden wooden floors and shelves for preserves in the basement.


Duckpond is a quiet but nice town, with rabbits and wild tiger-lilies and fireflies. You East Coasters don't realize how blessed you are to have fireflies. And deer! My daughter and I stood transfixed by a deer standing fairly near to us, watching us as we watched it.
"There's a deer!" I exclaimed to a passerby.
"Yeah, they're cute, aren't they," she observed, without stopping.
"We saw a deer!" I exclaimed to our hostess.
"Deer are suburban rats," she explained.
Well, they eat our yard in Portland, too; but I do find them enchanting.

What I found most striking about the observant Jewish community of Duckpond is not what a close-knit community it is, or that all its members, no matter their background and personality, are committed to spiritual growth, but that when I asked them what they like about the Duckpond community, every one of them described these attributes of the community in near-identical terms. That's unusual.

Quoth the Marines

I always thought of the Marines as harsh people who like to bellow and beat each other up.

But over Shabbos we heard two Marines discussing the Corps, and they gave it a cast of nobility. They told stories of Marines pooling their resources to help each other out in peacetime and giving their lives to protect each other in combat, and of the pride of belonging to the Corps, which is a bit like a family; and of how they can always pick another Marine out of a crowd by the way he carries himself... all of which was very interesting to the Jewish educators at the table, who listened to all this for its literal meaning but also as an analogy.

These Marines also observed that when recruits bash each other in the halls, it is not because they disagree with each others' statements, but because they want to test each others' sincerity -- you may say this now, but what I want to know is, when I beat you up for saying it, will you stand?

A question I never thought of in quite that way.

Will you stand?

Lakewood

Here are all the people of my own Jerusalem neighborhood: the yeshiva men and their wives and the double strollers full of kinderlach, walking to and from yeshiva and the grocery store and the schools.

But this population is juxtaposed with the idiom of America: the avreichim and their families live in houses with SHUTTERS! on LAWNS with LAWNMOWERS and the time and inclination to mow them! And they drive!

Lakewood is Disneyland: a fairy-tale country, the stuff of my American childhood but not of the world I have come to know as a grown-up, populated by grown-ups acting as if the magical scenery is real.

I wonder how long I could live there before coming to believe that it is.