Still Sundays

April 17th.

Our love for cities and others is often a love with our own imagination. Stories demand integrity regardless of what is true. The perpetual war is against love because the constant fight is within. Sometimes the only justice is knowing how things really are.

If you would like to know what Still Sundays is about, please take a quick gander here and just read the third paragraph. Thanks.

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Here I am again. New York City.

Our flight from Rome had a layover at Heathrow airport in London before arriving to John F. Kennedy International (J.F.K.) in New York. The flight from London to New York City was without incident, approximately the same amount of time it takes from New York City to Los Angeles, give an hour or a little over depending on the air route and tailwind. Once above J.F.K. however, the smooth transition lost momentum. We circled above J.F.K. for an hour and a half while babies cried to aching ears and adults who don’t know how to cry anymore exhaled agitation. I am a baby, I haven’t forgotten how to cry. Be that as it may, last night while the plane made loops above New York I didn’t cry but tried to breathe out the coming of a splitting headache. I can sense movement even if I can’t see it. I knew we were going in circles before the pilot even announced the fact. My mother patiently tried to remind me that feeling dizzy was partly my imagination given I couldn’t really see we were going round and round but I, quite annoyed, exclaimed that I can “see” that we are!  Who put eyeballs in the socket of feelings?

The immigration officer at passport control cracked a joke, “I would say ‘welcome home’ but home is a mess.” America, we are a mess. Where is the threshold for enough is enough? Where is my threshold before I take to the streets?

Thank you American Express and other credit card companies which pacify our frustration and provide the bait we bite every time that change is around the corner after this instant escape from reality. No change can come unless those in my position have had enough. We are not running on empty yet but it’s costing us a lot.

My  mother and I stepped outside into the cold wind gusts and angry rain and a long queue for taxi. Apparently cab drivers forgot this international terminal existed. We waited. Then we received a cab driver who appeared more exhausted than us. Maybe that is why he drove so slowly: he couldn’t relate to someone wanting to rush home? Where was his home? Maybe he was afraid of driving fast in the torrential downpour? Sometimes going slower on the road (and in life) causes more accidents.

Hello, New York. Are you angry at me for leaving or am I angry at myself because I want to leave you soon again? Or am I fed up because we have been here before?

You are dirty and you haven’t changed, New York. You remained cold while I basked in the spring sun in Italy. You are a lie or my imagination, New York. My mother is right most people don’t love New York, they can barely stand to visit.  This stillness that is a needle in the hay of paradoxes that feels like a natural remedy for my being who I am. Did I make you up New York?

Do I love you New York or is my love for you a hope that will never manifest and has never been?

You are broken and a mess, New York and I will leave you again very soon. You will never change. Is that why I return to you New York?

As we crossed the bridge into Manhattan I couldn’t help wondering if my attachment to New York was carved out to love for love’s sake.

I fell asleep to heavy lightening and thunder without unpacking, forgetting I was happy that my mother was with me for one more day before she returns to California.

I woke up this Sunday morning to make tea only to realize I needed milk. I stepped out into the cold Sunday morning, beyond livid, finally detached that it was mid-April and still chilly, to the neighborhood grocery store available like a reliable neighbor. The trees didn’t remember the crazy rain last night and were sloppy kissing the bright sun light. Two blocks down and Italy felt like a deep dream. The gelato, the train rides, the gypsies, the strangers who remind human beings are capable of more good than bad, the cobble stone streets that wobble memories, art and history in and outside museums…. Yet I couldn’t shake off the feeling that the New York I crave, admire, love, continue to return to, is one of my own making; it is not real, in fact, this is the dream.

I have this absurd conviction that if I can figure out the paradox that is New York City or at the very least my perverse (even when it is rational and explicable) attachment to New York City, somehow I will crack the code for some bigger question. Sometimes the question is love, other times life, relationships, people, law, economics, history, the human condition, but most times, simply, me.

Our love for cities and others is often a love with our own imagination. Seldom do we experience anyone or any place for who or what it really is.

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At the London airport I picked up The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee. The woman from California who sat next to me on the flight from Rome to London was reading it. I didn’t know the author or the title. I asked the woman if I could have a look and came across a short interview with the first time author (albeit very well connected in the publishing industry given her background as a former editor for Elle magazine). It was this interview which made me curious about the story. The author was intrigued by three characters that came to her and no plot. Took her five years to write the story while she had four children in that time and the book required quite an extensive amount of research into Hong Kong and World War II.

I finished the book during that plane ride.

I once told this to my father who asked, astonished and amused, “Where do you find the books, the excerpts, the articles you do?” I told him then as I have repeated many times since then, “I don’t find books, they find me.” And if it is indeed a ‘find’ then I am not conscious of my looking.

I envy people who experience so called ‘out of body experiences’ and then move on to share the incident as a joke or “me too” moments in conversations set aside to build intimacy, mine are many and reverberate deep within my body, leaving permanent imprints, I hardly ever mention. Mine are either part of my DNA, coded for many more times, or causing transmutations reaching for a domino effect.

Reading The Piano Teacher at that particular moment, while flying, transported me further into another space. The reviews are accurate—you can feel the characters in your skin.

I am yet again amazed that it takes fiction to help us understand the atrocities of wars for which we are still paying.  I am familiar with the history leading up to, during, and beyond World War II. I would be lying if I said I understood what happened specifically as it concerns Hong Kong in the 40’s and 50’s until I read this book. And of course like all stories, it too is a love story on the surface. All stories are love stories. The perpetual war is against love because the constant fight is within.

What is it about love that scares us so much? Abandonment?

The past becomes the present only if it makes cowards of us. Love demands we rise to the present.

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I told my mother my father was right in trying to ‘save me’ from pursuing the life of writing full time. He knew I could write when I was eight. My mother replied, “Annie, we all learn, as did your father, one can’t save someone from who they are. You were born with stories.”

The owner of a bed and breakfast in Italy who ‘googled’ me after the first night we stayed there said to me the following day, “You should stay in our small town, we all gossip a lot, and you seem like someone who can be trusted. Those are stories too, no? You will have lots of stories.”

When I was younger I didn’t quite know what to do with different cliques and people in various settings (academic, work, etc.) throughout my life divulging personal information or about another. Information is power and power demands responsibility. Responsibility in any context.  The magnitude of particulars shared is irrelevant.

Gossip is without preserving integrity. Stories demand integrity regardless of what is true.  Often I am the lawyer and the judge when I hear what someone has to share. Stories are a field without rules. We make up the rules after the fact, as in life, then we break them knowing better.

“Yes and no,” the trained lawyer in me replied to the owner and smiled a smile which I know can release the moment into insignificance.

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While walking in Florence we passed a man who was passed out on the street, in the fetal position, holding a cup without coins. When we returned at night, crossing the same street, he was still lying in the exact same fetal position, holding the cup without coins. I want justice for him that lasts more than the 1 euro I gave.

I want justice for the homeless. I want justice for the woman at the train station who didn’t know she deserves more than being a mistress for twenty years to a man who loves her but just not enough to have the courage to make certain decisions. I want justice for the man in the train who wasn’t taught what courage may look like in action in the small decision in life. I want justice for those who take advantage of honest people. I want justice for having been betrayed after trusting another more than I ever thought myself capable.

My mother said during our trip in Italy, “What bigger justice can there be than knowing who and how someone really is despite the facade they carry on with others?”

Sometimes the only justice is knowing how things really are.

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I need a reservoir for my dreams.

Is stillness that tank where I am the fish in dreams?

It is Sunday and I am back in New York City for however long.

It matters not if the New York I love is of my imagination and of my imagination alone. I don’t feel lonely in this reality. And love—imaginary or ‘real’—transitory or everlong—if it does anything at all it makes us feel less alone in the bargain of  being part of this human condition.

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