NY and NY (Part 3)

(expectations)

New York is far away from Pittsburgh.
Of all the things I learned this last weekend, that truth seems to be the key.

This is Part III of a three-part series that... admittedly... is missing Part II. That is still pending. But I don't decide what to write; that is purely the realm of Caissa, and she can be notoriously flighty on this subject. She demands this be written - I merely obey.
From the start, part of my plan went awry as I was unable to find Mark Spitznagel. Mark already had a place on the top-10 list of Most Difficult People To Contact, but has lately made a major effort to break into the top 3. This is not entirely his fault, however - he comes from the Nathan Wildfire school of doing three full-time projects at once - and like Nate, is wildly successful in all of them. I found out at the very end of the trip that the man was juggling two-a-day rehearsals for his show off Broadway while still working his job at TGIF's and working over his possible involvement in an across-America tour production. Also, he eats and sleeps occasionally.
So with Mark out, I spent most of my time in the company of Margaret, who kindly lent me her roof for my NY stay. This was already a little bizarre, considering what transpired the last time I went up to New York, where all my expectations for what the trip would be like were thrown out the window. On the flight up (as opposed to drive - got a great rate for round trip travel), I couldn't help but wonder what was going to occur. As previously written, you don't prepare for a weekend with Margaret, unless you can prepare for the unexpected.
I was not disappointed.
Our first day we went out to Manhattan, where I did my best farm-boy impression by gawking at the height of all the buildings. Pittsburgh has skyscrapers, of course, but they are well-known in Pittsburgh - the PPG building, Mellon 1, Oxford Center, US Steel Tower. Here, ALL the buildings were flying into the sky. Everyone hustled around in the rush of a city that didn't have time to meander. I followed Margaret - who was much too savvy to wander around like a moron - and we headed for our destination, Central Park.
This is where I received a purely NY experience. We went in through Artisan's Gate, and walked about 50 yards into the park, which apparently is something like 25 city blocks long and 10 city blocks wide. I felt like I had walked into an oasis - here was grass, trees, something other than dirty asphalt and broken concrete. It was a beautiful day, a bit windy, but with the sun shining strong and the sky clear. The path took us to a tunnel that would lead us deeper into Central Park.
At the entrance of the tunnel was a naked homeless woman defecating onto the path in broad daylight.
New York, New York!
It was uphill from there (it kind of had to be): chilling out on the rocks in Central Park, a pub lunch in Manhattan, and even a homemade dinner of burgers and potatoes. (My Irish blood loves meat and potatoes meals; I suspect Margaret, being half-Irish, knows this as well).
Another major event was the watching of two fantastic Miyazaki films that I had never seen - Howl's Moving Castle (nonchalant reaction of the year from the main character, whose main response to someone melting is to get them into a tub and go get a mop) and Castle In The Sky, which gave me chills when comparing its story to Final Fantasy Adventure. The Tree at the top of the world, the lost civilization, the robots still moving long after everyone is gone, the source of power, the girl with the pendant that has special powers, the hero boy, the real evil being revealed, the evil being from the same bloodline... its downright eerie! Both were utterly fantastic movies. (Miyazaki, of course, being the progenitor of Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke, which might be better known in the U.S.).
But my favorite part of the trip was going out to Yamcha, the correct spelling of which is pure mystery (thus the phonetic usage). Margaret had gone on and on about this restaurant, but we never visited - so this time we were determined to finally go to this "Chinese-Chinese" (as opposed to "American-Chinese") place.
Wow.
First off, the place is huge. There had to be 500 people in six different rooms. Servers were running around, people were running around, there seemed to be only the most tenuous system as to who went where when, and the system to get in seemed equally crazy. This probably was particularly true since 95% of all words were not English. This was definitely a Chinese restaurant - I had to be one of the ten people in the restaurant who was not at least partially of Asian descent - and thank God for Margaret, because I would have been totally lost. You sit down, and there is no waiter - there are simply carts that keep rolling by, one after another, making trips around the room, and as they go by you, you point at something you want to try, and they give you a dish of it and mark it on your card. It's sort of like a rolling buffet, only you never know what's coming next. This is particularly true when you can't identify 90% of what actually is going by; at one point I accidentally was on the verge of ordering chicken's feet, and was saved by Margaret (thankfully).
Now, I am not big on going outside of my boundaries (at least when it comes to food), so I steeled myself (and my stomach) and made a mental promise to try all kinds of things, regardless of what they looked like. I more or less let Margaret take the lead, sampling things and taking some myself when the situation called for it. I tried sponge cake (good), dim sum (meat in a roll?), pork in bread with sugar on top (kind of like an American pork sandwich), sticky rice in a leaf (difficult to open with chopsticks, and not worth the effort), and chow fun (horrible spelling but FANTASTIC!). Margaret could not stop laughing, between my chopstick usage, my amazement at how any of this worked at all, my stares as things rolled by that I wouldn't even think were food, and at the waitresses smirking at me as I tried to not embarass myself in a different cultural situation. Considering I embarass myself routinely in this one, I felt like it went pretty well. To top it off, Margaret was funny and patiently instructing, a key combo, and I ended up having the most fun of the entire trip. Having grown up eating American Chinese (love you Sesame Inn!), it was intriguing to eat at a 'real' Chinese restaurant. And that chow fun was AMAZING. It's like noodles and green peppers, Chinese style. Great stuff.
Really, there were too many moments to describe. Total confusion at Yamcha (how in Lord's name do you spell that?), of course, but also talking about serious matters of life on the subway, talking about ridiculous matters and stories at the house... it was fantastic. It was a reminder of what it was like to be around a close friend like Margaret, to never know what the next hour would bring, but to have a sense that whatever did come, would be excellent.

And yet...
What? I had no expectations. At least, I didn't plan on having any. I specifically fought against having them - and was successful, more or less.
New York is far away from Pittsburgh. That fact remains; unless that changes, it is immutable. Besides, how can I be disappointed? Because the trip didn't meet hopes I didn't know I had until I was there?
Reading that sentence over, I smile. First, the last time I arrived, I didn't have expectations either, and was surprised with a great weekend; second, the mere fact that I am having these thoughts says everything.
In some ways, I have been through more with Margaret than anyone else in my life. She is an intriguing mix of the familiar and inviting within an enigma, aspects I relate to so strongly, and others I am totally clueless about. Sometimes I think she's even a kind of warped mix of myself - as if we're made of similar ingredients, but the dishes came out completely differently. And sure, the weekend was fun, relaxing, and wonderful. But it could have been none of those things - and nothing will change the fact that the girl healed one of my worst wounds of my life, and by far my worst self-inflicted one, with little more than her strength of will to first move on, and then, to cure.

New York is very far away from Pittsburgh. And to be sure, that is sad.
But that doesn't stop being friends.

Smelling Blood

(a theory)

I've had a theory formulating in my head about Barbara for some time. The theory actually applies to others as well, but Barbara is the best example. I couldn't figure out why, or even what it was for quite a while - it was unspoken, etheral even, that kind of dreamy semi-conscious sense that you're on the verge of some inner revelation, but trying to mentally grab it would cause it to disperse like smoke between your fingers. Time - and some recent conversations - have finally allowed that smoke to condense into something real. An idea. A theory of one of the driving aspects of her personality.
Barbara senses blood.
All predators have this instinct to some degree. It's the ability to sense the location of a fresh wound, or an old injury whose scars hamper functioning. Lions can use this to sense which antelope to go after; snakes wait to see the effect of their venom before moving in to finish the job; even humans, upon realizing where an enemy is tired, hurt, or injured, will instinctively strike there, like a boxer that keys on an opening cut above an opponent's eye. It is the ability to sense weakness. Some of the greatest predators have this sense attuned to amazing degrees.
Barbara is one of these. She is like a shark, which is able to sense one drop of blood in a square mile of water. Or to be more accurate, she's like a wolf - upon finding a deer in the woods, it is immediately able to sense that the deer has injured it's right leg. The wolf won't rush in to the kill. Instead, it will circle the quivering deer, formulating the best way to handle the weakness. It can smell the blood trickling down the deer's leg. It can see how the injury goes across the taut muscle, interfering with its ability to provide power to a leap or sprint. It can sense the deer's weakness. The wolf can plan its attack to take the most advantage of that weakness.
Barbara is much like that. Only she doesn't sense physical blood.
She senses a soul's blood.
Barbara has the innate ability to sense internal injury - emotional, spiritual. Personal. She senses old issues, fresh losses. She senses lost loves, lost opportunities, lost hope. She senses old scars, half-healed wounds, small cuts hiding larger problems. She senses blood.
This is even more impressive considering that most people hide their internal wounds far more than their external ones. If you slice your arm cleaning gutters and end up requiring stitches, you show your injury to your family and friends, discuss how it happened in all the gory details, and proudly show the scar years later in casual conversation. But if you're hurt by a friend that you trusted, you hide the wound, not letting anyone near it. You don't tell your acquaintances or talk about it in a casual manner. And when people talk about the trust close friends have for each other, you smile and agree, doing your best to hide the fact that the conversation is like scrubbing salted sandpaper over a skinned knee. And the worse the wound, the more people tend to hide it. Consciously or not, they compensate, they shield it out of view, they try and forget - while the wound slowly drips, untreated, or is merely half-healed, to be broken open again easily the first time something accidentally brushes against it.
Barbara can sense that.
Maybe it's the unconscious signs of an injury; the inflection of a voice, the odd change of subject, the stare that doesn't quite meet eye-to-eye. But I like to think it's something internal, unspoken, that predatorial sense of weakness. A place she can attack.
But she doesn't.

That might be the greatest reason I couldn't put words to it until now - the fact that the ability was so obviously powerful, so easily lent to attack - and she uses it in the opposite way from its intention. Sensing an injury, Barbara handles it with the utmost care, moving around the injury, delicately handling anything that could open it, and even cleaning up a bit of the dried blood around it. This when she could just as easily rip it yawningly open.
Other people have a sense of this ability. Luke, of all people, has a touch of it. So does Julie. Margaret has more than a touch, sort of an unhoned version. But Barbara's is razor-sharp, and piercing; sometimes I suspect she's the closest thing to an empath this world has. She could do it with any of her friends, her acquaintances, her lovers. It really doesn't take long for her to notice that you are limping, emotionally.
But how does she know? How does she sense that its there?

I wonder sometimes what it would be like to see that through her eyes, like the boy in the Sixth Sense - whether, when sitting in a room during a social gathering, Barbara sees people smiling, laughing, talking, all the while with blood stains on their thigh, on their chest, dripping freshly from their cheek. No one seeing any of it except her.

The first book in the Sword of Truth series, Wizard's First Rule, has a group of women called "Mord-Sith" who are basically torturers of magicians. Their ranks are select, special, and only women. The girls chosen to be Mord-Sith are handpicked at age 12, and are chosen for being the sweetest, kindest, and most gentle girls in the land. The next six-to-ten years are reserved for torturing these girls, turning them into torturers themselves. "The greatest cruelty comes from the greatest empathy," is, I believe, a quote straight from the book. Somehow, this idea sort of fits. I can see Barbara being chosen to be Mord-Sith.
It's a terrifying thing to have deep conversations with someone who you know holds this kind of power, that they know - without you divulging it yourself - the location and depth of your most bitter injuries. What would Barbara be like if she decided to use that power just for her own benefit?
Or for evil? The amount of damage she could do - purely out of spite - makes me nervous, and I'm amazed to the extent it does. One wouldn't think something like this would cause worry. But then, most people haven't had injuries out of their past dragged out of the bottom of the swamp of their emotional core, events or choices or history that is raw and painful and wants to be left alone. The ability is so unbelievable in its potency that it must be experienced to appreciate its capacity for damage. How easy to win a battle when you know all the weak points of your opponent! How easy to inflict damage when you attack wounds that have never really healed! Anyone who doubts the power of this ability has but to have your worst moments re-lived before you. It's shocking.
Maybe it's Barbara's own boundless empathy for injury that allows her to sense hurt, in sort of a backwards "she's able to sense wounds because she's the least likely to inflict them" kind of way.
The fact remains, though, that she can smell blood. It's a terrifying ability.
"Great art", Susan Sontag writes, "has the capacity to make us nervous." I believe that applies to people as well.

No one goes through life without scars. No one goes through life without wounds. And I am nervous that she can see all of mine.

Those Damn Muslims

(perfect discrimination)

I received a very offensive e-mail today.
I won't mention, out of respect, the person that sent it. He sends many forwards, some irreverent, some political. I don't agree with some of the opinions, but I recognize them as his right to have them.
But this one crossed the line.

The e-mail had a picture of a new stamp - a simple affair, some lines on a dark blue background and an "EID" in the top left corner, a "37 Cents" in the top right. Below it was this:


CHRISTMAS STAMP
USPS New Stamp
This one is impossible to believe. Scroll down for the text.

If there is only one thing you forward today.....let it be this!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of PanAm Flight 103!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the WorldTrade Center in 1993!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the Marine barracks in Lebanon !
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the militarybarracks in Saudi Arabia!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the American Embassies in Africa!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM bombing of the USS COLE!
REMEMBER the MUSLIM attack on 9/11/2001!

REMEMBER all the AMERICAN lives that were lost in those vicious MUSLIM attacks! Now the United States Postal Service REMEMBERS and HONORS the EID MUSLIM holiday season with a commemorative first class holiday postage stamp. REMEMBER to adamantly and vocally BOYCOTT this stamp when purchasing your stamps at the post office.
To use this stamp would be a slap in the face to all those AMERICANS who died at the hands of those whom this stamp honors.
REMEMBER to pass this along to every patriotic AMERICAN you know


"Impossible to believe" is right.
This is discrimination, kids. This is nothing more than discrimination. Blatant discrimination. I write it three times because I still can't believe I received this.
People have used this kind of reasoning as an excuse for actions for centuries. The rape of one white woman by a black man proved that all black men were 'out to get' their white women; Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass, was the Nazi's "response" to Jewish acts, and thus all Jews deserved to have their property destroyed, their possessions confiscated, their family members beaten. Some Muslims did these acts? Then ALL Muslims must be evil, and anything Muslim should be shunned, denounced, and rejected as an insult.
Many members of the Muslim community were mortified at the actions listed above. The vast, vast majority would never condone such action. And many are now - incorrectly - being looked at sideways, with suspicion, or maybe even outright discrimination. And this e-mail believes we should be trying to boycott something as egregious as a stamp because it celebrates a Muslim holiday??

Listen up, people. Denouncing an entire group because of the actions of a misguided few is discriminatory and wrong.

The counter-example to this is easy and just as ludicrous. If twenty Christians got together, planned, and executed bombings killing thousands in China because they felt Buddhism was evil, would it be right to condemn Christianity as a whole? It wouldn't matter whether it's a hundred or a thousand. The millions of Christians around the world would be mortified as well, and equally mortified that it was "in their name". The acts themselves should be shunned, absolutely. But you wouldn't want to be lumped in as dangerous, to hear that your beliefs were "evil" and an insult to others, if these acts occurred. Why should the actions of a small minority speak for you?

Sadly, there is no cause so noble that it will not attract morons - and for every cause, there will be their share of extremists, who take things (shockingly) to the extreme. They say no more about the beliefs of the majority than if a small minority of Christians believed the Bible gave them the right to kill and murder their enemies. Wow. I bet that's never happened before.

I could have let this go - but really, this kind of thought process festers if not actually confronted. If people are willing to let it go, it just gets worse and worse. Hitler and the Jews were the same way. Strong example? How terrifying is that it actually worked like that. No one willing to stand up for what was right, instead just letting things get gradually worse and gradually worse. "All evil needs to thrive is for good men to do nothing" - the quote's not exact, but it's close.

So I wrote back. I have substituted the name.

XXXX,
This e-mail offended me. I don't mind the occasional political or 'incorrect' e-mail, but this is something else. To denounce an entire group of people based on the actions of a few is discriminatory and wrong. Please don't send me this type of e-mail anymore. Thank you.

I have not, as yet, heard back. I may not at all.
Weird to think that I learned about the Civil Rights Movement and the Women's Suffrage effort and the blatant racism of the 19th and 20th centuries and think about how backwards people were back then... and then I get an e-mail to remind me that this kind of thought still exists today.
Sad.