Still Sundays
August 29th.
Rhythm of stillness. What’s in a greeting? Art for art’s sake, sex for sex’s sake, but no love for love’s sake? Tattoo of “Pole Star” by artist Alphonse Mucha.
If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.
I was out with some friends last night and a friend’s friend mentioned how she couldn’t stand the City: the noise, the chaos, the people, the rush, the pushing, the hurrying, the commotion of going nowhere too fast, the overheard meaningless babel of strangers.
Was I delusional? Stillness in New York City that I rave about—figment of my imagination? Was I that in love with New York that I couldn’t hear the havoc around me? Why didn’t I hear and see this? Did I no longer interact with the outside world as much as I did before?
Ten years ago that woman was me. Loved New York but loved hating it. Loved New York but not without constantly complaining about it. The move to New York was part-choice, part-circumstance and part-intuition. I knew that is where I had to be but couldn’t quite make myself fit into the form-fitting sleeves of my decision.
I appreciated her curiosity. I told her I lived in a very community oriented neighborhood and block surrounded by trees, churches and two huge parks. And although it too was hustling and bustling out of the seams, restaurants and lounges popping on top of each other, and is hardly as quiet as it was five years ago, it was still….well….Still. Moreover, I am also living a lifestyle of my utmost liking which allows me, not without planning and savings, but leave New York whenever I want: Philly to see my best friend Erica, family in California, and overseas as far as South Africa.
New York didn’t define me; I defined New York. I believe the stillness I speak of is borne out of that carving. I can hear a steady beat inside the multi-rhythmic pulsating blend of music that can’t easily be tuned out. The tempo matches my heart. Stillness then is a cadence of choice.
There is a quaint and intimate pizzeria near my yoga studio on the Upper West Side where I pick up a slice once—and sometimes even twice—a week after a late evening yoga class with Marco Rojas. I enjoy the personable aura much in part to the owner Dan who treats everyone that walks in there as if this was a miniature Italian restaurant. It so happens that Dan and his wife live in my neighborhood further uptown. New York City—we really are just a big small town.
Two weeks ago I happened to be the only one in there. Dan and his people know just how hot I like my slice and when I want the music turned down or up while eating my slice. While I sat there an older woman—possibly in her 70s?—walked inside. She was wearing a light pink skirt suit at 9:30 p.m. at night in the middle of the week. She had some collector’s jewelry on her person: an antique diamond ring and a few unique brooches. I said and did which felt the only natural thing to do: nodded, smiled and said “Hello” as I continued to inhale my pizza slice. She smiled back as if she could almost recall me from some memory and was waiting to share this information.
I ate my slice and spoke to Dan about his family’s upcoming weekend plans. We discussed my writing. A few other customers came in, ordered, impatiently waited, and left. I saw the bus—Crosstown 79—come and go. I was done eating but it would be another 12 minutes before the next bus to take me a few avenues over to Central Park West also known as 8th avenue. I decided to wait inside instead of outside.
The woman—lady in the pink skirt suit—said it was quite alright if I sat across from her instead of at a different table. So I did. I watched her slice her pizza with a fork and a knife. I told her I eat pizza and anything else I can with my hands. Nina, originally from Greece, was 78 years old and said people didn’t say hello anymore when you walked in somewhere unless at a store where they are trying to sell something to you. She just wanted to thank me for saying hello. I told her not to give me too much credit for I greeted inanimate objects as well.
She wanted me to promise her that I would go to Vienna before I died. I laughed. Yes, I will go to Vienna. You promise? I promise.
She has a daughter in the “most beautiful city in the world” so she visits once a year if possible but here she was, living in New York for the most part. “The hardest part about getting older is that the world treats you like second-class citizens, especially in New York.” I told her I was sorry to hear she felt that way. I asked her about her antique ring. It was her mother’s. “My mother was a very religious woman you know, but some stuff she said actually still makes sense.” Then Nina said something in Greek even though I had already informed her earlier I was not any part Greek. She translated it to mean something along the lines of how important it is to greet another whether you know them or not. “An affirmation to God of His creation.” I nodded.
I had never thought of greeting strangers that way. I just did because I always had and that is how I was raised.
I looked outside: my bus would be coming anytime. I told her so. She wanted to know where I live. I told her. She too was taking that bus but all the way across town to the East Side, unlike me who will get off before Central Park begins the divide between East and West sides of Manhattan.
Nina would like me to tell her why my generation doesn’t believe in love. I didn’t understand. She shared, “I was married for 46 years to a wonderful man.” I tell her what I think she wants to hear, “Yeah, we give up too easily. We don’t work at it anymore.” Nina replied, “What is there to work at when it is not there?” I was not getting out of this one. I told her I didn’t know what she meant or anyone means anymore when they speak of love.
Nina softly spoke, “You guys believe in sex for sex’s sake but not love for love’s sake. Your generation really doesn’t believe in Love Love, just love.”
Nina from Greece. I forgot to ask her why she came all the way so far from where she stays to have a slice of pizza.
I met a woman last night with a cool tattoo. I am not easily impressed—amused yes, impressed, no—especially by tattoos. But this really caught my attention. She told me it was a tattoo of a drawing called “Pole Star” by a Czech Art Nouveau painter and decorative artist named Alphonse Mucha.
Art for art’s sake?
I am at once attracted to that phrase and simultaneously not quite accepting of it.
It’s a beautiful Sunday. It’s still.
Yoga awaits to meet more stillness.
~a.q.s.
I look forward to your Still Sundays so much, Annie! Maybe it’s because I’m always working on the other side of the world on a Sunday evening, but they always come at the right time. In this case, I can picture your pizza companion so clearly and love that you didn’t learn everything about her.
I had stopped into a grocery store that wasn’t in my neighborhood. I had been on my way home from a meeting, and decided to stop mainly becuase the parking lot looked rather empty, and I was in a hurry to get home. I can’t remember why I was in a hurry to get home, I just was.
There was this woman in line ahead of me, and she had to have been no less than eighty years old. When the boy asked her if she wanted help out to her car, she told him no thanks, because she was walking home. Onward she went, with her bags.
I watched her as I waited for my few things to be scanned…. She seemed to be having a bit of trouble, and the thought of her walking home in the snow and cold just bothered me. After I had paid for my things (and debated whether or not I had the time to spare), I caught up with her at the door and asked her if she would like a ride home. She thanked me, and said yes, and then asked if I wouldn’t mind if she went back in to the store to grab some potatoes, now that she wouldn’t have to carry them all the way home.
I carried her groceries into the house, all the while she was regaling me with stories about her grandchildren. She told me that she had lived in her home all alone since her husband had passed. She offered me tea and cookies.
I took her up on the tea. She kept me entertained with her quick wit, and when my tea was finished, I had a certain longing to stay, even though my ‘good deed’ was complete, and there was this nagging feeling in my mind that I had been in a rush.
As she walked me to the door, she placed her hand on my arm, and looked right at me with the directness that only seems to come with age and wisdom. She told me very clearly, in no uncertain terms, that I was to tell my father and mother that they had done a good job raising me. That they were good parents to have raised a child with such respect and such a heart. That they should be proud of themselves.
“Thank you, Mrs. X”, I had said.
As she ushered me out the door, she called out, “Lola. Everyone calls me Lola, dear!”
I got into my car, and I cried all the way home. My father had never had the kind of relationship with his mother that he had hoped for. She never seemed to be proud of him, no matter what his accomplishments were. He tried and tried to be good enough, but I don’t think he felt he ever reached a pinnacle of success that she would deem sufficient.
Grandma passed away without ever being able make things right. My father wondered beyond the end of his mother’s days if she was proud of him.
I picked up the phone when I got home, and called my father. Through my tears, I told him what had happened, and what that lady told me to tell him. I tried with all my heart to remember her words exactly, because something told me that it was very important.
My grandmother’s name, too, had been Lola.
Sometimes people appear not when we expect them, but when we need them.
Just saying…
as usual, beautifully weaved words made it possible to share with each other different experiences but similar emotions of bonding with human beings …and greeting people spontaneously just as a habit makes life so much worth it…that we are acknowledging to each other and god that ‘man we are happy to be alive and breathing’….other wise we are walking but dead people, since its only living beings care for each other.