2 June 2008

New York has changed for me as a friend changes with distance. Though we have remained in touch, trysted in the scraper’s arms, laid dumb in the city, one of us has changed and something is lost. I have moved house (Harlem was traded for the Upper West Side) and changed vocation (Columbia traded for the United Nation) and while I don’t feel much different, that is perhaps it. After all, change wreaks a tectonic shift on occasion—maybe the plates are misaligned, the strata contorted, the parallels bent. So it goes.

It is true that the similarities between last week’s lifestyle and this week’s are few. In the last I rose mid-morning and fell at midnight. Now my hours are more diurnal and because of my proximity to the early morning I meet an entirely different breed of people. As I student I mostly met other students, or still others who shared our atypical lifestyle: homeless, jobless, aimless, misanthropes, transients, travellers. Now I’m one suit amongst many. So many. Pinstriped maggots on a concrete cadaver, the subways heave. Thousands of us, replete with badges and wallets and umbrellas, perform the elaborate ritual every morn and eve—the dash to the train, the sidestep, the door-hold, the tacit acknowledgement of another familiar with the ritual, the less tacit disdain of those who are not.

There is much more to say but in the face of nine-hour days there is little stamina left to say it. Thus, I retreat for now. More transmissions will follow. If not for your sake for mine. So it goes.

Aroha, Jeff, Laurence and Marie-Joelle. Matapalo, 2008

(more photos here)

9-15 May 2008

Costa Rica came down on us like a thunder-clap. The skies, for so long dormant and brooding, opened with the ferocity and mute indifference of a volcano, emptying great sheets of water, walls of thick globulous raindrops so perfectly formed they hit the ground and bounced back, rain so heavy, so lugubrious that we who walked through it had to resist the urge to extend our arms in a swimmer’s stride, pulling ourselves against the air like bathers at a waterfall.

This is Matapalo Beach, Costa Rica, a place as distant and alien from New York City as the desert is from the Arctic. In New York every edifice is drafted then redrafted to give the impression of civilization—civilization defined against nature, civilization constituted by layers and layers of steel and mortar and reinforced concrete, all built atop the rock and dirt of the island. In Costa Rica there is no such edifice. Nor is there the arrogant and fallacious view that human is not animal, that human has evolved past nature, that base human instincts and biological drives can be extinguished with culture. Nature in Costa Rica is inevitable. When one stops, listens, rests in Matapalo creatures all around move, chatter, work. Lying static on the beach, for example, is enough assurance for a mile of burrowing crabs to emerge from their holes and hurl a claw’s worth of sand from the entrance. Sitting stationary on the patio is enough to reveal a pair of geckos at every light fitting, flitting from one crevice to the next. Many animals simply ignore the barriers of human construction; in our house the pathway from the front to the kitchen door is, it seems, a thoroughfare for nocturnal crabs which, when a light is illuminated or the vibrations of a step felt, scuttle on the tiles as they would the silent seas. Birds impertinently and repeatedly tap at the windows, seemingly annoyed at the fetter to their flight (even now, two days after I wrote that line, the same pair of birds are hammering at the pane). At the opening of most crevices are the glowing eyes of insects or arachnids, each as wary of the human as an emperor is of a subject.

Even when the creatures are invisible they create such a cacophony that their presence is irrefutable. And herein lies one of the great shames of travelling. Namely, that the traveller is rarely able to convey the sounds of a place—indeed, it is perhaps true that when one is not expected to hear the sounds, or does not feel they can convey those sounds, one does not hear them, or hears them less—focussing instead on photos, seeing a place as a kind of exhibited abstraction, a lattice of portrait and landscape 6x4 frames. A ‘shame’ because in places like Costa Rica, like New York, sounds contribute—perhaps constitute—the atmosphere. In New York stereos on window ledges and in cars pulse with the quick rhythm and accordions of Latino music. On every street the rattling conversations of drug-dealers and checkers-players stutter like Morse code. And in Costa Rica the noises are even more striking. No one told me, for example, that when the monsoon comes the thousands of locusts that dot the foliage amplify their shrill ensemble so that even intimate conversation is difficult. I knew not that in the thick air of the tropics even distant lightning strikes let forth a roar so mountainous, so primal, that windows shake and the yawning frequency vibrates the blood and bone from foot to head. I had no conception that the combined force of millions of raindrops on millions of leaves and trunks and branches and roofs generates a sound so full, so oppressive that even the thunder is timid by comparison.

The sounds here really are startling. Like someone recently blinded, my sense of hearing has sharpened to that of a canine. Every discordant note of every cricket can be discerned, every heavy tumble of every wave resonant as it peels away to the horizon, every leaf stroking every other leaf a bow against string.

So this is Costa Rica. And what a relief it is to see the horizon, the forest, animals, sand and sunset. With such distance between me and Manhattan I dream of ripping my clothes off and hurtling into the jungle with a machete. Of climbing trees and howling as a feral beast. Of caves and fires and long days spent chasing down game. Of growing lean and wily and tan. Of defecating and procreating and hibernating. Of tearing at my hair and beard with a dull knife or a sharpened rock. So potent an elixir is this place I dream of casting off every fusty vestige of humanity, shedding all that fetters the freedom to live on instinct and instinct alone; to eat when you are hungry, drink when you are thirsty, think of your head as a skull, fuck when you are aroused. To live for once as we are, as animals.

But of course that kind of fancy is naïve. I write on a laptop. I have a fan stirring the sticky air of my room. I have moisturiser to salve the sharp and painful rouge on my back and neck. I have a mattress under me, pillows behind me. I balked at the prospect of six hours flying, then four hours bussing, then one hour taxiing. I continue to be alarmed when a six-legged creature I beat with my shoe suffers the blows and scurries on. I take as a personal affront any inconvenience, any filth, any delay. In my weaker moments I look forward to the first shower back home, where I can scrub the entrenched filth, salve the cuts and bites, and linger under the hot water. And sure enough soon I shall drown myself in humanity. As Baxter said, ‘it is better to lie Dumb in the city than under the mountainous wavering sky.’

***

As I have mentioned before, this particular medium gives rise to a tension between speaking of the mundane or of the abstract. Analogous, perhaps, is that when looking at photos most of us find most captivating the ones of people. Finely composed photos of landscapes, of mirror-lakes or exotic creatures, of sublime nature cannot compete with the stupid smiles of a close-up pair. Humans are trained to recognise faces. We are good at it. Given that writing and photography are both forms of representation, it follows that when reading, what is most interesting for most people is other people. The criticism I have fielded, then—that I talk too much of too little—is a just one.

In response to this criticism I offer two defences. The first is that while I acknowledge that my life is constituted by relationships, I am [still] not qualified to represent them. My pen is too blunt, my fingers too callous, my mind too sluggish. While this is perhaps a sophistry—it is easier, after all, to list hollow inanimate vignettes than to describe the lines of a face—that I am scared of hurting is true. Hurting by misrepresentation or by abject truth, it really doesn’t matter, the potential to alienate is the same. If I was to talk of people, therefore, it would be in a manner so banal that any detail would be impossible to make out.

The second defence is one of audience. Because ‘blogging’ (how I loathe that word) is a medium in its infancy, because I am a novice blogger, and because I am equivocal about the purpose of this blog, the question of who I am writing for is unclear. In the absence of clarity I revert to a default position: that of writing for myself. Thus, herein lies what I find interesting. Returning to the analogy of the photo, perhaps the only image that can trump the stupid-smile close-up is that which is framed by a mirror. And if I am to make any claim, it is that I am neither special nor unique. I am bound my human fancy as much as I am by instinct.

14 April ‘08

There is, it seems, a space reserved in the human psyche for ambition, for that conscious or unconscious desire to attain that which brings glory, influence, power, et cetera. It follows, then, that when one does not possess such ambition, the space left behind is as glaring as that of a missing tooth. This left-behind space is not only empty but is the opening for a potent vacuum that exerts its pull on every other aspect of one’s life. For those of us who did not wake one day and know we were destined to be a builder or a bureaucrat, for example, the vacuitous nature of that space is a source of deep disquiet. Lacking some bone-lodged drive we spend much of our lives trying to sate the vacuum. For many, the way to sate it, the best way to plug the gap, is to fill it with some external force.

Religion is one such force, and a near-perfect one at that. Belief in fate is another that, while powerful, lacks the brilliant and self-contained answers of the various dogmas. Children, in some instances, are a further example of a satiating force, a further way to pass on the implicit and silently subconscious responsibility of deciding about one’s own life (in this final example, the silent and subconscious is replaced by the ability to decide on someone else’s). There is more to say here, but let me digress for a moment.

One of the reasons anthropology is on its last legs as a discipline is that much of what constitutes its scholarship is entrenched in age-old theories of evolutionism. Evolutionist theories suggest that all humans can be classified on a scale with barbarians at one pole and the civilized at the other. On this scale, white Europeans—as the most ‘civilized’ of peoples—are at the top while Australian Aboriginals, for example—as ‘barbaric and uncivilized’—are at the bottom. As well as shaping a nascent anthropology, evolutionism provided justification for various historical atrocities; slavery and colonization are two examples. In the early nineteen-hundreds, the reigning evolutionist theories were challenged and by the middle of the century were largely struck from popular use. Anthropologists today pat themselves on the back for having revealed evolutionism as the fallacious and racist theory it is. They treat as curious artefacts the texts evolutionism produced and blush and chaff when the ‘founding fathers’ of anthropology are revealed as the key proponents of evolutionism.

It is perhaps unfair, though, to blame evolutionism solely on anthropology. After all, it could be argued that like most disciplines and institutions, anthropology just reflects the dominant theories of the time. Indeed, the basic premise—that humans evolve from one state to the next—echoes in myriad other disciplines, development programmes, and covert ‘civilizing’ missions like those which enforce Eurocentric democracy (and unlike anthropology, those disciplines, programmes and mission flourish today). At the origin of these echoes is the fact that entrenched in the Western psyche—and perhaps others, I cannot say—is an ineluctable desire to progress, to develop, to advance. And given that ‘progress’, ‘develop’ and ‘advance’, are synonyms for ‘evolve’ there is a prima facie case at least for concluding that the subversive and infectious brethren of evolutionism cling to the Western psyche like leeches cling to a body. Leaving that thought in its infancy, I return to ambition.

The basic path most of us follow seems to agree with the notion that we are obsessed with progression. Toddlers attend kindergarten in preparation for primary school, primary school is attended in preparation for intermediate, intermediate in preparation for high school, high school for university, university for a job, a job for children, a partner and retirement, retirement in preparation for, well, death. So it goes. A grim and simplistic rendering this may be, the basic premise holds; that at the core of our existence is a perceived need to progress.

The implications of this need to progress are many. Of note here are just two. The first, to which I alluded, is that in the absence of any clear-cut path there exists in many of us a sense of deep disquiet. While some can allay this disquiet with religion doctrines, or a belief in fate or pre-destiny, or children, those who cannot must suffer the anguish of the vacuum, and the pull it exerts on other aspects of life. The response to this anguish—and here I speak solely for myself—is an abdication of responsibility.

One of the many little anecdotes I run with various people from time-to-time is that, in the course of my life, there is very little I feel I had agency over. That there wasn’t, for example, a morning where I woke up and decided I wanted to study anthropology in New York. Instead, I was quite sure that these things ‘just happened’, that I was a passive recipient rather than an actor, that various events and relationships merely fell on me like a shadow. A friend recently had me up on this point, quite rightly arguing that I do, of course, have agency and that all events in my life (save for those determined by external forces) have been my doing. That at this moment, who I am, where I am and what I am doing is my responsibility. I am liable for all that is going wrong and all that is going right. Even if taking full responsibility for one’s life is possible— surely such an act would involve recognising that there’s a version of the self independent from others, that there is something which constitutes the true ego?—the thought itself is, perhaps, too terrifying. For that reason I shall continue to abdicate, for now.

The other implication is that there are very few times in our lives—and here I teeter dangerously close to New Ageism—in which we are content to live in the present. Like those who live this life in preparation for the next (surely the most acute of tragedies) we live for the future, for a time we know nothing of and can do nothing to change (influence, yes. Change, no). There is merit, I think, in the practice of ignoring the hulking unknown and concentrating on what brings happiness in the present, in finding a niche between hedonism and philanthropy, between nihilism and rabid religiosity, or at least in not viewing the present as merely a condition of the future but as a valid and worthy time itself.

***

Okay, so that’s that. I leave behind the pseudo-philosophy, the preaching and proselytising, the immature tirade and lurch instead towards something more tangible. I’ve just returned from a New York comedy show which, later this week, will be complimented by a Broadway musical. The comedy was fine, gays, Jews, blacks, whites, Asians, the elderly, the young were all ridiculed equally. There was, however, the unnerving experience that occurs with most oft-parodied spectacles—here I’m thinking of street-theatre, parades, office relationships, the news—that when witnessing the live performance it is difficult to determine whether it is satire or reality, so close to the two coexist. The musical though, as part of a particularly loathsome genre, I am somewhat nervous of.

Coney Island, April '09
More photos available here.

7 April '08

A while ago I mentioned of a German word, Schadenfreude. A word that means, roughly, to take malicious pleasure in someone else’s misfortune. The Germans have an even better word—‘better’ because the meaning is even more nuanced, and the translation into English even more difficult—which describes when something is not as bad as you expected, and you are disappointed. The word, Scheissenbedauern, is an apt sign for the feeling I have about the New York Winter.

Last year, wincing at the heavy air that preceded an early storm, I described a shift in the weather; a shift from fetid, tepid breezes to bracing, bitter winds, a shift from the casual optimism of summer to the reservation and introversion of winter. Unfamiliar with the New York climes, you see, the nascent season in October made me quiver with nervous excitement.

It is with disappointment, then, that as the calendar determines the onset of spring I must let go of my fear of winter. There was snow, sure. The mercury dropped well below zero for a couple of weeks, okay. I saw cars sliding down hills, impotent against the ice, fine. But that all happens in Christchurch. And Christchurch is about as exotic as a haemorrhoid. I wanted doors to be immobile against great flurries of ice, roofs to collapse under the weight of sleet and slush, school to be cancelled because of impassable paths. I wanted to have to remain indoors because roaming outside would, like ninety-seconds in the Arctic, render my feeble body a glaucous blue. I wanted, if I’m being honest, injury and terror, disaster and abject misery. There was none and, hence, Scheissenbedauern becomes appropriate.

(Part of the reason there were no problems is that this city’s inhabitants are proficient—nay, masterful—at managing whatever inclemency the skies divvy out. At the first sign of sediment the pavements were dusted with thick granules of salt, after every inch of snow that fell walkways were cleared with an arsenal of shovels and spades. All these actions were performed with the same monotonous regularity that a factory worker inspects product, they were as natural as).

So, spring’s here, summer’s coming. So it goes. And after four paragraphs on the weather I shall move on.

***

I recently learned that I will be in New York City for at least another two years. Previously I was, in all likelihood, to return to New Zealand this May. To accommodate this extended stay, a significant shift in mindset is required.

I have lived in New York, on Manhattan, in Harlem, for eight months. Every day I have caught the same train from the same subway station, every week I have bought groceries from the same market. Despite this regularity, this routine, there is little that binds me to this city. It is difficult, for example, to think of myself as anything more than a tolerated guest in this neighbourhood.* (Antilogous perhaps—and here we return to the theme of words-in-other-languages-that-have-no-direct-equivalent-in-English— is the example of the Māori word, turangawaewae, which crudely translated becomes ‘place to stand’. Extending the translation, turangawaewae refers to a place where one has a sense of belonging, an ancestral homeland. I find that the best approximation for one’s turangawaewae is the place that, if you were to die tomorrow, you would like to be buried).

While this is no doubt attributable, at least in part, to my non-comprehension of Spanish, there are other factors. I have mentioned previously that New York is a city of transients. In a great tidal movement of blood and tissue, millions of people alight then leave the island every day. Every year millions more come to settle in one of the five boroughs or depart to populate somewhere else.

Even what remains—the buildings, the streets, the sewers—lack permanence (especially since two of the great symbols of the city were razed seven years ago. So it goes). The City is a vehicle, a chaotic junk made from concrete and steel. It lists, careens from one side to the next, is kept afloat by coincidence and coincidence only. It is, for now, a location at which meaning and novelty radiate in ever-widening circles.

* I should mention that while the disconnect between the psyche and City can be disorienting, there is a peculiar—and sometimes exhilarating—freedom in having no roots, something akin to that felt by nomads whose incessant wandering makes them at home everywhere and nowhere.

Between Albuquerque and Santa Fe, March '08
More photos posted here.