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His Holiness Rides the Subway

September 24, 2015 in City Matters

Something about how the Pope’s visit has taken over the city has me giggling. On the L train today, the conductor blearily announced that the subway was running behind schedule “because of the Pope” and I started looking around the car for a guy wearing a white hat, a lace dress, and millennial-appropriate ennui. After that, I kept seeing the Pope everywhere. The Pope on Wall Street, buried in his smartphone. The Pope at Bergdorf Goodman, trying on a tomato red lipstick. The Pope strolling the High Line, slurping an almond milk latte while ogling the Jersey skyline. The Pope cry-smiling at Fun Home. The Pope mawing a sandwich at Fuku, David Chang’s newest. (“His Holiness really likes spicy chicken.”) The Pope drinking 40s with the old-timers on my block. The Pope taking an Uber from Bushwick. The Pope waving furiously from the top of the Chrysler Building. The Pope at my gym, tapping his Legend Blue Jordans while waiting for a treadmill. The possibilities are endless, really, but they all boil down to the same thing: No one’s getting anywhere in a timely fashion today.

Atonement Isn’t Just a River in Egypt

September 23, 2015 in City Matters, Past Matters, Spirit Matters

Around lunchtime today, I couldn’t for the life of me figure out why Whole Foods was so empty. When I finally remembered, it was nice to realize how many practicing Jews still populate New York despite our ever-dwindling supply of Good Bagels.

On the train home, my bounty in bags around my feet, I thought about why I don’t observe Yom Kippur any more. The fasting part is obvious: I was anorexic for long enough that taking a day off from eating is like trying to smoke crack casually after years on the pipe. Even now I carry my extra 15 pounds around with a measure of pride, as proof that I love myself enough to tolerate my (vast) imperfections.

I suppose too there’s a feeling that this last year—the last four, really—has been a nonstop, involuntary period of atonement. Every day I pay the bills for which I’ve been delinquent most of my adulthood, literally and figuratively. Every day I amend for how I catered to my pettiness, my vanity, my greed, my fear, and my rage so long as I believed the world owed me anything but wonderfully impersonal love.

On this September 23, this autumnal equinox, this day of atonement, I also relish what is here to be relished. I eat apples, I drink wine, I have color in my cheeks. And I send courage and compassion to everyone, even me. Gmar Chatimah Tova.

New York City Balance

September 21, 2015 in Age Matters, City Matters

I had to laugh at myself tonight. I was coming back from a screening, and was in this great, gentle mood. I’d taken a big leap of faith in the morning and had received such lovely support for it that by the time the movie outstripped my expectations, I was floating on Cloud Nine. On the train home from Midtown, I beamed at everyone, then got off a stop early to savor the cool, sweet quiet of my neighborhood.

Really, the word for how I was feeling was beatific.

Just as I was rounding the corner to my building, ready to write about all this good will, two twentysomething girls tripped by in clattery, clunky heels, nearly knocking me over though the street was otherwise empty. They were screeching so loudly that I instantly forgot my love for humanity. Visions of Alternate Universe Lisa being rudely awakened by their blather danced before my eyes. Continue Reading →

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy