A search for place

 

We were lucky to have an aunt who lived for much of our young lives in Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York, New York, the city so nice they named it twice.

Which meant we, my brother and I, had an inroads, a gentle introduction, to the Big Apple just following its great years of crises – the Summer of Sam and the burning of the Bronx – and during its renaissance and renewal with Broadway’s revitalization and Reggie Jackson and Mayor Koch and concerts in Central Park and the ‘86 Mets.

So that we got to see the Empire State Building, and the Statue of Liberty and Washington Square (where Harry joked with Sally), and shopped at old, old comic book shops and visited trading card collectors, and ate at Tavern on the Green and Windows on the World, which I think was on top of the World Trade Center.

We made a special pilgrimage for myself to the west side of Central Park, across from the gothic Dakota building, on whose sidewalk John Lennon was shot the Christmas I was ten. There’s a shrine there called Strawberry Fields, and there I paid my silent, bashful respects, because at that time I was quite young and John was my favorite Beatle.

It so happened that one clear summer evening in that cigarette-smoke apartment of my aunt’s she gave me a five-dollar bill and said I could go down on the street and get myself a slice of pizza pie, which apparently was what they called it in New York.

So down the hallway which smelled of cigarettes, and the elevator (the same), and out the doors in the lobby where there was an older, lazy-looking uniformed doorman, out I went into the city.

And I was out in downtown Manhattan alone during rush hour, and with all the people, and cars and taxis – just like in the movies. I remember the city always smelled of rotting lettuce, like there was a river of rotting, sludgy, brown and green lettuce in the sewers under the sidewalk or street or whatever, and up through the culverts and manholes and subway vents that ripe air came. It was later on being a dishwasher in college that allowed me to identify that smell of rotting lettuce.

I think a couple of things when I think of that pizza-slice-buying adventure. First, how completely different I was from everyone; not unique in a good way which came later with time; simply different by having no good feeling about having people all around. You don’t know how your life is going to go when you’re young, but if it’s going to involve fifty years of working in an office in a city, I thought that was going to be a miserable life, in a modern David-Copperfield way. Like people who have to reluctantly grow up into the family business. That seems like it would be miserable.

The only thing that kept me -a scared rabbit – sane for that little slice of time getting a slice of pizza on the street corner was seeing how nobody seemed to see me at all, meaning we were all packed together and anonymous and invisible. And I knew if anybody did take a notice of me, all I needed to do was ignore them. There was a lot of ignoring going on. And, to be honest, the more ignoring there was, the better everything seemed to me.

In the years following I started to grow up and New York became just a way point, almost fly-over country. But my discomfort with people and loneliness in crowds continued. I got to an age and had acquired an education and some work ethic and certain ambitions, whereby I could choose where I wanted to go with my life, where to live, and where to work. In the country? In the suburbs? North? West? In Paris? Or in India?

In part to confront my aversion to – or fear of – crowds and strangers, I chose one of the most densely populated places in the world. A place, moreover, where they spoke no English (nor, for me, French or Spanish). Where I was the opposite of anonymous and invisible: I was conspicuous, tall (for the first time in my life), Caucasian, and a little odd.

I lived there under those conditions (except that I was able to quickly pick up the language) and I got fairly used to the day-to-day stressors of a Steppenwolf, Hermann Hesse’s wolf of the Russian steppes dropped into the center of a metropolis.

A few times over the years that I have lived in the North woods I have lost our way deep in the woods, and I’ve asked Peppy my golden retriever to lead us out; she finds a faint deer trail or game trail and follows it with nose or instincts. It’s nice to have her with me, usually.

Foxy, a spaniel, and I are of one mind: quiet, intent, focused on partridge. When we are working for the ruffed grouse, she forgets the red squirrels and chipmunks. She quarters back and forth, and when I tend another direction, she tends with me, always seeming to know where I am without looking back.

Daphne, a cocker, always looks back when she turns. Looks back to find me. She runs so fast sometimes that when she stops, she doesn’t know where she is, so she looks for me with her little head up and big, floppy ears cocked.

It’s good to be left alone, and to be in tune with others, to be wanted and needed, to know where you’re going, and to be able to go there. I’m here now where I choose to be, usually with the people I choose to be with.