Shabbat

It happens four times a week in New York.  Right smack in the most productive part of the day, by law New Yorkers must rest.  Some sit idly, some read.  Now with laptops and a little stolen wifi, we can surf.  Like little islands of calm in the work around us, we pause, until we return, refreshed, with a new perspective to our busy lives.

I’m referring of course to alternate side of the street parking. I had my first experience with it last week, coming to the lovely little space I had found for myself first thing in the morning to dutifully clear out for the street sweeper. I was pulling out the car at 8:58 AM, when I noticed something funny.  No one else on the block was moving their cars.  Hardly anyone was even in their cars.  What do they know that I don’t?

My plan was to feed the meter for an hour or so, maybe going to a café for breakfast.  As a back up, I brought some work with me and a pear.  So I started circling the ‘hood.  There were no meters.  It seemed that most everyone had already moved their car, or planted themselves close by and double parked.  I kept circling, my stomach growling.  Eventually I came to another spot where the sweeper had just left, and I sat and waited quietly, the world whizzing by just to my back, until I was ready to join it.

I can see how this can get old, and I can only imagine what the winter will be like…  Today, for example, I went to a main street with a meter and I am now sitting happily in a café.  But the meter machine refused my 2 credit cards, forcing me to use my precious quarters, which are urgently needed for washing today.  And – only in New York – my breakfast of a flat bagel and a juice cost $9.  Come to think of it, why do flat bagels cost more than regular?  They are just smushed regular bagels – do they really need my extra 40 cents for the trouble?

So this Shabbat might not be a luxury I can afford too often.  Still, after a week of being sick, it’s just a treat to leave the house. 

Postscript: As I was writing that really deep observation about flat bagels, I was getting a $65 ticket.  I did feed my meter, but I carelessly stuck the ticket face-side down on the dashboard.  Really?  Forget Shabbat.  The hunt for parking, the observance of byzantine parking rules is no moment of zen.  This is why they call it a jungle, this is why this is a tough town.  Will I never know peace unless I pay for a garage?

Space

As a drama teacher this summer, I taught – and learned – how everything around us affects the character of the space we occupy.  A basic theater game involves mirroring a partner’s hands, working in tandem to agree without words on how to shape the space.  Is it thick? Heavy?  Slippery?  Only after mastering this can an actor move on to shaping the space around them in a way that communicates emotions.  If two people are having a fight, how can we tell that just by looking at them?  They use their bodies to change the shape around them, giving it hard edges, electricity, and violence.  The study of acting includes not just how you twist your face or deliver your words, but your awareness of the entire space around you.

Designers of sets, cars, clothes, and most anything else keep these ideas in mind.  Angular is masculine, tough, and ominous.  Curvy is feminine, kind, and comforting.  That’s why the inside of an SUV is as inviting as your mother’s lap, and women’s suits in the 80s conveyed a bulky strength that women didn’t have before.

Since we arrived in New York in early September, hurricane season filling the space with humidity you could slice, I’ve been very aware of how the space has been carved by us, and how we shape it as well.  All these angular buildings and endless flat stretches of pavement – how strange it is to be an animal in this sort of space!  In most cities you have a sense of the features of the land.  Not just a hill or two, but more trees, grass that’s been there for a while, a guess at how water comes in and goes out on its own.  It’s hard to imagine that this town has ever been natural, hard to even guess what it might have looked like as an untouched island, with a soft shoreline and marshes.  When the space is hard around us, it is no longer part of who we are, receptive to our movements and our soft bodies.  The square buildings cut the space into hard-edged blocks that move as we move around them, cutting into us sometimes.  I think this is why we feel either exhausted by being here or energized, as we rally ourselves against the unnatural.

In addition to a constant awareness of the quality of space in New York one can’t help but notice the lack of it.  Parking is difficult, sidewalks are crowded, subways are packed, the job market is competitive, and you can’t get a reservation in a restaurant.  I am delighted to come home and close myself in a room, feeling my own space at last, even if it’s just a rental.  And parking depressed me so much on my first try, as I searched for half an hour, always just missing an opening, endlessly hunting for my spot in the world, or at least on the block.  But oh the thrill of finding your very own space, safe and sound and just right, even if it’s out in the public where everyone can see.