Dying is an Art.

I woke up thinking about Sylvia Plath this morning and how she disappointed me furiously later on in my fandom, and it seems that I’m still not sure what to do with that disenchantment – so I thought maybe I’d try spilling it out onto my blog to see what happens, since I tend to figure stuff out if I just start writing about it, rather than thinking, since thinking in my head where there’s no organization (or “delete” button) often leads to trouble.  So here goes.

As an English major and aspiring writer back in the early college days, I felt like Plath's darkly clever poetry and sinister wit could invigorate my all-too-often parched spirit like warm water revitalizes dried yeast.  The biting criticism she grew up with, the absentee father figure, her astute observations and weary wear on society and current events, and the unique way she could re-interpret and twist the English language, all added up to the perfect collection of poems for me to indulge in, over and over again.  I even named my cat after her.

But as an English major in college, you only read her poems.  You don’t read The Bell Jar, because if you took regular English in high school, that’s where you’re supposed to read it.  I was reading The Tempest and Crime and Punishment in high school because I was in the advanced-placement English course, so I had skipped The Bell Jar, and as a kid I wasn’t much of an avid reader other than what they told me to read in school, unless it was something particularly special or stupid that I’d read over and over again, like The Adventures of Pippi Longstocking.  I was much more into watching movies and television shows – no surprise there, given what I decided to major in later on in life.  But I was always very aware that I was missing out on some great mental adventures and fantastic mind-movies by not having read as much as my friends did growing up, so years later I began an avid readership of everything I felt like I’d missed out on, and The Bell Jar was near the top of my list, because of my found affinity for Miss Sylvia's poems.

I hadn’t seen her biographical film yet (a superbly fascinating portrayal of the writer by Gwyneth Paltrow, by the way), so I had nothing but her poems to lead me by the hand into the most personal and autobiographical prose she ever wrote.  By the time I’d finished The Bell Jar, I hated her.  No, I despised her.  I felt like she’d exploited my own feelings by inviting me up into her world like a close sister who had grown up in a similar house, and then tossed me off the roof by revealing an ugly truth behind all those poems.

Talk about having a colossal slab of talent, middle-class upbringing, opportunity, a contract with The New Yorker, and a multiple book deal being handed to you on a silver platter – and then you kill yourself.  When I was reading that book, I had just lost my job among other things, was feeling completely helpless and hopeless after every remaining shard of my self-esteem had been completely shattered and scattered to the wind, and I was trying to survive on a daily basis by taking it one tiny step at a time, even though I didn’t feel like I even had a ground beneath me to walk on.  So: Really, Sylvia?  YOUR life isn’t worth living?  What does that make MINE?

When I would tell people how pissed off I was after reading The Bell Jar, they’d inadvertently start to defend Sylvia Plath, explaining that she was always a bit “off” and obsessed with death since childhood.  That she was depressed.  That she was mentally ill.  That I couldn’t know what else was going on with her by the time she decided, at age 30, to seal herself off from her sleeping children with wet towels and thrust her head into the oven like a whiny mottled housewife looking for attention.  Screw all of that!  In my mind, and in my own dazed and jaded opinion, she had so much more going for herself than I’d ever had in all the combined years of my own life, and then she decides it isn’t enough to live on?  So how am I supposed to take that from the woman whose poems inspired me, lifted my spirits in sisterly camaraderie, and in their own weirdly dark and tragic way, offered me hope because someone else seemed to be just as self-indulgent, self-pitying, and inwardly reflective (read: narcissistic) as I was, but somehow became recognized and successful in the world, despite all of those shortcomings - or better yet, because of them?

So Lady Lazarus was finally dead to me.  I do still love her for offering me the opportunity to indulge in her poetry when I really needed those words, and for how she allowed me to identify with her just by sharing the most revealing, exposed, stripped down, completely naked parts of her heart and mind, which in turn clothed and warmed my own heart and wrapped an airy, lightweight scarf around my own wicked, horror-filled brain.  But by the time I’d reached my own worst personal hell due to circumstances both self-induced and environmental, I was desperately cold, bitter, and in danger of spiritual hypothermia, and I think I realize now that having read Sylvia Plath’s true story and knowing what she finally did with all that personal tragedy in her life, I could have reacted to it in only one of two ways:  I could have decided that it would be nothing for me to go out in a whimper just like her, or I could chuck the book across the room, close my eyes in satisfaction at the loud “thump!” it made when it hit the wall, and write her off in my head exactly the same way she wrote herself off a cliff. 

So I chose the latter, more dramatic option (of course), and maybe that was just one more of the countless “small events” that contributed to my recovery, and I should probably thank her now for so extremely pissing me off.  I feel awful for her and for the fate she was destined to decide for herself.  She was only 30, for chrissakes – old enough to have her shit together, but young enough not to really know any better.  Her children and even Ted Hughes still speak of her affectionately, and she does continue to live on in the hearts of impressionable high school girls and 20-something tragic Goth chicks just like me who are hopefully destined to shed their Goth chick persona, get with it, and get over it.

Sylvia Plath was the ultimate Goth chick.  Obsessed with death, obsessed with life only by how it defines death, and obsessed with finding new ways to die, over and over again, only to be revived a different way each time.  She did do it exceptionally well.  This time, I’m the resurrection.

You Talkin' ta Me?

I don’t know if it’s just me, but New Yorkers seem nicer than people back home. They smile more, they’re funnier, and… dare I say this?  They’re more polite.

Or maybe it’s just me.

But I don’t think so. I have a theory. And since I share a birthday with Albert Einstein, my theories should be taken very, very seriously.

I have concluded that N=PF².

That is to say, the number of People (P) times the amount of square Feet (F²) of available space equals a naturally occurring sum of Nice (N).  Or, Nice equals People times Square Feet.

So the more people there are who must share a finite amount of space in the City, the nicer you kinda have to be to each other. It’s, like, a survival thing, I guess. Or maybe it’s tribal. Or species-al. (really? spell-check doesn’t have a problem with that word? weird.)

It’s my theory, and I’m stickin’ to it.

Because back home in the western states, everything is spread out. The buildings, the mountains, the towns, and the people – all spread out. So you don’t really have to be very nice, or even say hello to someone for an entire day if you don’t want to. You could go to the grocery store, grunt back at the girl beeping all your food past the register, get gas at the station by swiping your card and never even looking at a gas station attendant (do they even still have those?), go shopping at the mall, eat a burrito grande in the park, and make it home in time to catch up on Bret Michael’s Rock of Love without brushing someone’s arm or even making eye contact.

Not so much out here. If you drive, good luck not being honked at, waved at, or having some kind of expletive (in varying languages) spat in your general direction – all in good fun, of course, because that is how New Yorkers acknowledge each other and say to one another that “You are, most definitely, NOT invisible to me.” You exist!  You’re not a number – dammit you’re a man.  And you’re in everybody’s way and everybody is in your way and isn’t it great that we can all muck about and be in each other's ways these days?

You see, I consider being recognized, even with passing anonymous disdain, a much friendlier gesture than being ignored entirely. And that’s what they do out west – they ignore each other.  Booooring!

I can prove my theory. Remember those cheeky Westerns where the bad guy always says to the good guy, “This town ain’t big ‘nuff fer the two of us, pard’ner…”? Well, there’s your historical account of how people acted towards each other back in the wild west days.  I think the people who initially moved out there did it to get away from everyone – and it took one hell of a long journey in covered wagon to accomplish this. And now, thanks to genetic memory, those of us who’ve descended from those lone cowboys still feel a pang of violence toward that one other guy who seems to be taking up our space in our town.  Now that gun fights at high noon are (mostly) illegal, I think we’ve all just learned to ignore each other so as not to be startin’ somethin’ (sorry – I think that’s more Michael Jackson than cowboy talk). Maybe that’s where the lack of eye contact comes in as well… they say not to make eye contact with someone if you don’t want to start a fight…

Again – I digress. I digress a lot these days. Blogs are good for that.

Case in point: I was in Sedona a week before we left for NYC, and my watch got snagged on something and fell off somewhere around the Tlaquepaque shops. I noticed it almost instantly, since Gary knew he’d seen it on my wrist in the very last shop we came out of, so we retraced our steps multiple times, asking every shop owner along the path if someone might have turned it in, and stayed around long enough for someone to come clean and give back the watch. No one did. My watch was probably snapped up within a minute after it hit the ground. Someone obviously picked it up and kept it, not bothering to wonder or even care if its return might be greatly appreciated. It wasn’t even a very expensive watch, either.  I mean, geez.

A week later at the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan, Gary and I were in the business center of the hotel where guests can use the computers to check in to their flight and print out their boarding pass, etc. I was helping Gary do this for his return flight home, and I was a little bit flustered at the time and trying to hide how upset I really was that he wasn’t going to be able to stay with me.

We got back to our room, and as I sat down on the bed, silently pouting at his boarding pass, the phone rang. Gary answered, looked at me incredulously (I’ve always wanted to use that word), and said “Thank you! Thank you very much!” and hung up. He told me that the front desk had called to inform us that my purse had been turned in by somebody by the name of AWESOME and that they were holding it for me to come pick it up.  I didn't even realize I was missing it until we got the call.  I'd inadvertently left it – credit cards, cash, driver’s license, passport, and all – on the floor next to the computer. Everything was still there, down to the last penny.  Could have been a New Yorker who turned it in, could have been someone from out of town; didn’t matter. It was in the City, and because N=PF², the person who found it was the product of the sum of Nice.

The other day at the Museum of the City of New York, I got so starry-eyed at the Joel Grey display that I somehow left my camera on the display case and walked off (yeah, go ahead, raise your eyebrows at me – it is strange how often I seem to lose things these days). Once I realized I’d left it there, I went back to retrieve it and it was gone – and just as I was about to give up asking the staff if someone had turned it in, my friend Laura called after me and said “Margo! He has your camera!”  I whirled around (picture this in slow motion with violin music in the bg) to see a smiling older man – a very Nice man – holding my camera all safe and sound and warm in his pudgy little fingers. I thanked him profusely and my day was resurrected.

Not only are the people just plain friendlier, but weird and magical things tend to happen here. I was just telling Gary before last weekend how I’d suddenly realized, during a particularly humid walk home from Central Park, that I really would be needing an umbrella here, and felt stupid for not packing the little travel-sized one that I keep at home. So I promised him that within the next few days while Laura was in town, if we found ourselves at a shop where they sold umbrellas, I’d buy myself one. So the night Laura came out, we decided to walk along the Museum Mile, where you can gaze up at the Met Museum's eerily shadowed night lighting, when hardly anyone's around, and you can jump and play on the vast concrete steps that lead up to the remarkably mammoth Greco-Roman columns that signify the Museum’s grand entrance. As I skipped down the far side of the steps, my eye caught something in the light. Looking down, a single object lay parallel with the steps:

ella, ella, ay, ay, ay... Thaaaat’s riiiiight. An umbrella. Not just any old umbrella – a freaking New York Yankees umbrella. As Laura pointed out, it might as well have had a bow wrapped around it – and I pictured maybe even a small card that said, “To Margo, Happy New York.” Or something. Come on, admit it.  Say it with me: That was kind of spooky. Should I have turned it in?  Well, OK yeah, maybe.  But you see, when I opened the umbrella, I realized that it was dirty, slightly damaged and broken on one side, and kind of old - but usable.  The museum was closed, it was very late, and there was nobody around, so I took it home.  Maybe I should have turned it in the next day or something.  Crap.  Now I feel bad about it...  Maybe I haven't been here long enough yet to factor completely in to the realm of Nice.  I'm sorry - it must be genetic.  I'm working on it.  Irony in hindsight can be very unsettling... So not only do random New Yorkers seem to watch over my property for me, they also ask me things in the elevator.   “Going running in the park today?” “Do you like this weather we’re having?” “Where did you find those crazy shoes?”  You can’t avoid a conversation with a New Yorker, because they ask you things. Back home, you might hear someone say, “This dry heat sucks,” but you don’t necessarily have to respond. You could easily just vaguely nod and still avoid eye contact if you wanted to. Heck, they’ll even point out the most popular table to sit at in Effy’s Café, remind you in the shoe store not to leave your purse behind while you do the idiot walk of testing a potential new pair, and they’ll even stop you in the subway and say, “The 6 train’s not running today, you’ll have to go all the way to the Brooklyn Bridge and transfer back up on the 4…” – even if they have no idea where you’re actually headed.  It doesn’t matter where you’re headed. You’re there, you exist, the subways are jammed with people (remember, P x F2), so Nice will be in plentiful bounty all around you. Another friend of mine who grew up here pointed out that before 9/11, people weren’t quite so nice as they are now – so there are plenty of other factors that can weigh in on the sum of Nice. But it’s been 10 years since that horrific day, and I’d say that Nice in New York is here to stay. And maybe – just maybe, so am I. (...and now I feel really, really bad about not turning in that umbrella.)

Why New York?

Some of my friends from home have asked me, “What’s the big deal with New York all of a sudden?” and fellow film students have asked me, “Why not L.A.?”

Here’s my attempt to ‘splain it all.

New York City is a strange world.  It’s a country all its own, with its many boroughs and cultures and stories.  When I came here for the first time last August just to visit out of curiosity, I had no idea what was in store for me the moment I set foot in the City.

The Dakota Building on West 72nd Street (photo from Wikipedia)

In Manhattan, the skyscrapers, apartment buildings, and business districts are alive.  There’s a feeling of presence that scuttles along with you as you walk down the sidewalks and gaze up at the beautiful spandrels and gables of the Dakota Building, or gawk at the (in my opinion) cheesy, somewhat mawkish Art Deco of Rockefeller Plaza.  Each and every block has a short story of equal importance but varying intensity in the NYC anthology.  

St. Patrick's Cathedral on 5th Avenue (photo by sunsurfr)

You can be walking down the street anywhere – Greenwich Village, 5^th Avenue, or even Wall Street, and happen upon a cathedral so massive, so beautiful, and so ornate in detail that you begin to wonder if you might be hallucinating from culture shock.  I found myself standing in front of these brilliant structures and just staring at them, completely mesmerized by not only their majestic charisma but also by the mere surprise of finding one there, literally in the middle of the City, surrounded by taller modern as well as older buildings, which always seem to hover around the cathedrals as if they’re protecting them from harm.

Then there are the “everyday” places where you go when you’re just being a citizen – like looking for a good book to check out at the Public Library on 42^nd Street, or just catching a train from Grand Central Station.  The buildings that have been preserved for these mundane activities are completely unlike anything I’ve ever seen in the west. 

But before this just ends up being an overly long rave about the architecture itself, I think I’ll go a little deeper into why this type of structural design translates, for me anyway, into personal security and a sense of well-being. 

Out west, we have the wonders of the Grand Canyon, the ancient, endless breathing terrain of Yellowstone, and the towering cliffs, crashing seas, and mammoth Redwoods of Northern California – all of these natural creations functioning as working evidence of the presence of God, or some kind of creator, because how could something like that exist without the existence of love to define it?  Natural beauty always gets a good rap for being described as “God’s creation”... but what about what we create as the hands, eyes, and soul of God?

I see the architecture, the loving preservation efforts, and the collective appreciation for the historical buildings, cathedrals, and public edifices in NYC as evidence of God working through our hands.  New York City as a whole is very extreme – and quite breathtaking in its various extremities.  Which brings me to another point about why this City speaks to me, personally.

I, like New York City, have undergone my own transformation.  I was also at one point in my own history in a very run-down, dangerous state, and I had to pull myself out of that place in my mind and body in order to survive.  New York has done this several times.  Most recently of course, in the decade following the attacks of 9/11, but before that, in a major transformation during the mid 1990s.  New York City had been described in the 1980s as a crime-ridden, crack-infested, depraved place to be trapped in, with no way out for the poor and no decent way to live for the middle class.  It became a living testament to the dark side of humanity, and was criticized profusely for the rampant pornography and subculture, while completely overlooked for its potential to celebrate sexuality and diversity.  It was, in a sense, the ugly, greasy, unpopular kid who always got picked last for dodgeball, while L.A. glimmered brightly in her effervescent notoriety as the “It Girl,” especially in the film and television industry.

In time, however, Manhattan was given a good sweeping up, a good polishing, and what some have described as a tasteless Disney-fying of Times Square (I happen to agree with this, although I don’t know what it was really like before, so I can’t judge it too harshly).  It still has its problems, but it’s come around 180 degrees and re-emerged as a popular tourist attraction, a city of joy and prosperity, and as the new Hollywood (with “Golden Age” connotations) as far as a renaissance in the entertainment industry goes.

I think New York City personifies what is possible, what is beautiful, and what is spiritual in humanity.  If you look hard enough, you can see twinkles of our own collective unconscious in the gargoyles, the seraphim, and the creepy little cherubim that line the storm drains and rooftops of the spectacular buildings here.  The City itself is a massive throng of human life, perpetually unleashed – back into the hands of New Yorkers who run about in their taxis, subways, buses and sidewalks to keep the place running 24/7, 365.  A soul never dies or sleeps, which is why this is the City that Never Sleeps, and it’s only fitting that Times Square is where the entire country, as well as a large percentage of the world, tunes in every year to watch the New Year begin – because NYC is the perfect venue to reinvent oneself and pursue New Life.   So that's why I 'get' New York, and why New York 'gets' me.