On life, and also The Wire: A two-part series

I am not a religious woman.

One of my grandfathers died last month. When my uncle Andy and aunt Priscilla flew in from Taiwan for what they hoped was a chance to say their final goodbyes but turned out to be for the funeral, they came into my grandma's living room bleary eyed, having spent 24 hours traveling. It was about 7 a.m. their time. My mom was running through who was doing what during the funeral -- "And Andy, I have you down for the eulogy!" "What the ... eulogy?" he said, sounding annoyed but more likely just exhausted. My uncle is a preacher and theologian; who else to give a eulogy. At the funeral home, I saw him scratching notes, trying to keep his eyes open.

The funeral, held in a Catholic church, had little to do with my grandfather or his life. To someone with no religious background, it was a series of rituals, songs and Bible readings that may as well have been chosen at random, with a casket sitting at the front of the room. Towards the end, my uncle approached the podium. In his eulogy, he never strayed from simple truths. In doing so, he not only imparted great meaning on what was in many ways an unremarkable middle-class life; he also gave me a whole new sense of clarity about my values and how I got this way.

My grandparents met in high school (where they were first and second in their graduating class), became a couple in college and married in 1950, when then were 23 years old. By 1960, they had six kids. My grandfather took the bus from their suburban neighborhood to the city every day. He earned a good living but they never had more than one car -- it must have seemed wasteful to them. Imagine that. He's working hard, he's earning all the money, but he's the one getting on the bus. The bus was fine for him -- more important to chip away at the mortgage and save to put six kids through school. He never thought he needed a sports car, or fancy electronics, or a membership at an expensive golf club, but he bought jewelry for my grandma and made sure my mom and her brothers and sisters had everything they needed. When I was young -- I had forgotten about this -- he visited his mother every Saturday and took care of all of her finances. He never complained about here I am doing everything for mom and what's my sister contributing and blah blah blah. He never complained at all, that I can remember. Life was good to him, but that didn't give him a sense of entitlement. He used the opportunities he had to go out and do the right thing, and do what needed to be done, every single day.

On its face, my life bears no resemblance to that of my grandparents. They had the house in the suburbs, wife at home (for 15 years anyway), dad goes to work in the city, church, carpools, first communions, family dog, red meat for dinner every night, station wagon in the driveway. I share a rented condo in an up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood. I'm single and childless at 31, have a lot of unconventional friends, a law degree, enough spare time to read and write. I eat tofu and date musicians and wear black and campaign for lefty causes and candidates and hang out in cool bars.

But sitting in that horrible suburban church listening to my uncle, I realized that I'm just like them, and my parents, and my dad's parents too. My peers don't understand why I've never been to Europe, why places like the Lower West Side of Buffalo and Bushwick and Bed Stuy mean so much to me, why I insisted on living in a barely furnished studio apartment with no TV and no car when I was in law school, why I keep the credit card debt in check and hang onto my savings and have never had my nails done or owned a remote control. They make fun, and they try to convince me to loosen up a little, but who do they turn to when they need someone to move their car, water their plants, feed their cat, do their taxes, give them legal advice ...

At times I get tired of being the boring, responsible one but when I need something, I get it and then some. When my grandfather died, I was in Buffalo visiting friends. The wake and funeral were in Pittsburgh two days later. I had no way to get there, nothing to wear, no idea what to do. My friends, and my sister, came through with everything -- rides to the store, use of their computers, a black dress, even a car to borrow to drive to Pittsburgh and back. Their generosity, and my uncle's words, convinced me that I'm not a loser for going to work when I don't want to and showing up to things when I don't feel like it, just because I said I would. In a world of selfishness and broken plans and competitive consumption and so much crap that nobody needs, I stand for the possibility that old-fashioned values still matter. It is my hope to work towards shedding the conformity and rigid gender roles of my middle-class suburban roots while hanging onto everything that is admirable about that legacy, and to build a life that matters.

I haven't gotten to The Wire yet. But I will.

Advice

If you're feeling a little depressed, or experiencing negative emotions of any kind, or even are in a state where you could end up feeling that way if given just a little push in the wrong direction, do not read anything by Wally Lamb. A few chapters of I Know This Much Is True and some rich asshole tying his dog out in the rain was all it took for me to go from good day to near meltdown. What is wrong with people.

brief hiatus

It is my plan to start writing on this site again shortly. I have done hardly any reading in the past couple of weeks due to travel, a death in the family and minor upheaval in my work and personal lives. There's a lot going on. Plus I need to accept that I'm not going to finish some of the books I started, put them away, and start something else. Dreams From My Father is okay but ... sort of boring, honestly. Hooray for living in a free country where I can say that about a book by the president. Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself, an account of traveling with David Foster Wallace, is also sort of boring, though I covered that already.

Last night I finished The Wire. I'm not ready to talk about it yet, but I agree with those who say it's the best show ever made. The best show I have ever seen, anyway. There's a montage at the end of the second season, which is about the decline of blue-collar work in Rust Belt cities, that encapsulates all the forces that brought me away from where I came from and to New York in search of stability and success.

Sometimes I think about starting another blog and calling it Rust Belt Exile. But what would I write? Maybe I could interview the people I've met in New York who come from Detroit, Grand Rapids, St. Louis, Syracuse ... there are no shortage of them.

Empire of Illusion

I was sitting in my living room/let's call it a home office just now when I heard someone on NPR talking about what's wrong with global corporate capitalism and being pushed on "But did you say Marx was right about some things???" all Fox News style. "Who on earth is this radical?" I wondered.

Answer: Chris Hedges, author of one of my favorite books, War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning. I'm reading his Empire of Illusion now. So far, it is not one of my favorite books, despite detailing a lot of things I'm concerned about -- the downfall of reason, failures in American education, etc. He makes a lot of undeniable points, but Barbara Ehrenreich made them better.

New York I love you, but you're bringing me down

No matter how big of a liberal you are, being constantly surrounded by people who are different from you in terms of language, accent, culture, background, life experience, clothing preferences, food preferences, weather preferences, volume of indoor speaking voice, you name it, can wear on you in ways you never expected.

No matter how much you hate cars, and I really hate them, carrying everything you might need in a day -- gym clothes, sneakers, lunch, files, book to read -- on your back or shoulder can make you feel like a pack mule after a while. A grumpy pack mule with a persistent ache.

No matter how much you are creeped out by an America that aspires to nothing higher than positive consumer experiences, gleaming floors, wide aisles and bright lights, you will get sick of buying your food in places where the floor is dirty, it smells weird, they have no squash you can recognize but are well stocked in these thingys that look like anteater snouts, and the brands and flavors of yogurt they carry vary by the day.

No matter how much of a "foodie" you thought you were, making tea with what looks like an old-fashioned shaving brush, coffee with a set of glass tubes and cocktails in barrels for aging is bullshit. And putting bacon in everything is really not that cute or clever after a while.

No matter how good of a sense of humor you have about things that are both gross and inevitable, you don't want the first thing you see when you emerge from underground to be someone's vomit frozen to the metal stairs.

Not everyone has these experiences, of course, particularly not the first. But if you come to New York neither wealthy nor idle, be prepared for a pretty serious grind. It conjures visions of the capital city of an on-the-rise third world country, a glittering playpen for the fortunate ringed by layers of crowded and dirty shantytowns for everyone else, complete with benevolent billionaire overlord. At least we have really excellent drinking water, I suppose.

Just Kids

Just Kids, Patti Smith's memoir of her relationship and creative partnership with the late Robert Mapplethorpe, may be the ultimate New York story. When Smith and Mapplethorpe met they were barely 20 years old, trying to make it as artists, so poor they couldn't afford food. They inspired and drove each other for decades and both achieved great success. Along the way, they performed for Bob Dylan (well, Smith did), found their way into Andy Warhol's social circle, witnessed the golden ages of CBGBs and the Chelsea Hotel, acquired wealthy patrons and saw the world. The world Smith describes is colored by celebrities and drugs but ultimately driven by a passion for art and a passion to succeed much more than a passion to know the right people. Art and rock music may sound glamorous, she seems to say, and maybe they were, but what you really need to do is to put in the time. Smith worked in New York for the better part of a decade, running cash registers and living hand to mouth, before her first album was released.

Smith wrote Just Kids to fulfill a promise she made to Mapplethorpe before he died, 20 years ago, of AIDS. It's a fitting book for me to be reading right now; I've been thinking a lot about my obligations to do something with my life, and to do the things people who couldn't be on Earth for long never had the chance to. Yesterday I found out that a kid I used to tutor died of cancer. He was in his early 20s. Salim was a refugee from Somalia, by way of Kenya and Tanzania. He was a sharp kid and a good person with an excellent attitude. While other teenagers on the West Side of Buffalo were out getting into trouble, being irresponsible and destroying things, he stayed home taking care of his younger brother and his nieces and nephews. And he never bitched about not getting to be a normal teenager. Salim did get to go to college for a couple of years, which is something he had wanted, but other than that, never had much of a chance to enjoy life. And now he's gone.

His story, and Smith's, and Mapplethorpe's, are all reminders that our time on Earth is limited and that we only get one chance to make it count. Smith approaches her subject with honor and reverence. She is also a wonderful writer. It's a compelling read.

Big Girls Don't Cry

Several years ago, when I reviewed restaurants for a local magazine in Buffalo, I went into a vegetarian-centric new place called Merge for the first time. The menu included black bean cakes, various derivations of the chickpea, crunchy grilled sandwiches, spicy soups, even fried pickles dunked in marinara sauce. "Wow," I thought. "Everything I ever want to order is on this menu."

Big Girls Don't Cry, Rebecca Traister's book about the 2008 election and the status of women in politics and society at large is that menu, in book form. Everything I want to read about, all the time, is there. Finishing it before she speaks at my favorite bookstore in a week and a half should not be a problem. I may finish it today.

Update: I finished the book, but did not make it to the reading. Flu had me down. But, I saw Traister read at the Brooklyn Book Festival this past summer and, as she lives in Brooklyn, I'm sure there will be other chances to see her again.