Dear New York: I Love You/Hate You/Love You/Hate You (Part 1?)

(my only NYC tourist-y photo - recently taken on my cell phone; poor Ms. Liberty)

Now that I have finally made up my mind to definitely move out of New York City to the beautiful Pioneer Valley of Western Massachusetts, I am having all kinds of second thoughts. And of course, I am not even allowing myself to experience the emotional reality of leaving behind my beloved friends, and my baby “nephew,” because then I’ll never go. I recently visited my friends in Astoria, and thought (again) what a completely wonderful neighborhood that is. I love the diversity. And then I thought – how can I give up the amazing cultural diversity of NYC?! It’s my favorite thing! I love my neighborhood during the daytime, and the wonderful clash of cultures here, such as the Chinese man in his sixties who runs the nearby Laundromat and speaks excellent conversational Spanish with his customers, including me (whenever he lacks the English word, he just throws in the Spanish one, and I try my best). There is a Korean store owner who smiles and says, “As-salaam alaikum” to his Arabic-speaking fellow store owners when he greets them. I love that. But at night, this place gets taken over by testosterone-fueled rage, and there is a lot of drama and sometimes violence. I am exhausted from intervening, from springing out of bed at 4 a.m. to either call the cops, throw on my shoes and run outside and break up some fight, or just stand at the window and wait something out to see which way it’s going to go.

I recently made a list of all the times I could remember that I have been the first, primary, or only person to intervene in a violent incident in NYC in the past decade or so. I’ve come up with 11 times, and five of them have been in my neighborhood (the other six were in Manhattan). This doesn’t include tens of phone calls to police where I did not physically intervene myself. It is probably not a coincidence that my number of migraines has increased ridiculously in the years that I have lived in NYC. I can’t attribute it solely to living here (since it’s impossible to figure out what causes what, and what’s due to the natural progression of a really evil condition), but I know that I am calmer outside of NYC. I will still, inevitably, be on high alert, always on the lookout for anything and anyone that might need my help (caterpillar in distress!), but I think that living in a less constantly stimulating and intense atmosphere may allow me to relax…eventually.

Here is my current working list. I will probably edit it, but this is it for now.

REASONS TO STAY

REASONS TO GO

·     Beloved friends ·     My best friend ·     Dess and Kevin’s baby ·     Cultural diversity ·     New York City has everything, all the time, in multiples ·     My acro partner (if she comes back to NYC) ·     I have 4-5 wonderful people here I trust to help me heal my body – it’s taken me so long to find them… ·     Circus community ·     Circus shows ·     Theatre (not that I go see anything, but if I wanted to – there’s NYTW, BAM, St. Ann’s Warehouse, P.S. 122…) ·     I have too much stuff to move it anywhere (I am starting to purge it, but STILL, oh my god…) ·     Magnolia Bakery ·     Jackson Heights ·     Fire Island ·     Australian pie shops, which also serve Australian-style coffee, which is the only coffee worth drinking in all of NYC ·     The various ethnic neighborhoods and stores of Manhattan ·     The ease of public transportation ·     All the wonderful ethnic restaurants ·     Ayurveda Café         >sob< ·     Easier to get a job

·     Too many people, all the time, all smushed up in each other’s business, and really irritable about it ·     Violence ·     Drama ·     Constant barrage of foul language in public, in front of kids and everyone, merely as part of conversation (recent example between two sober, adult men: “Yeah, I’d f---k that p—y” “I’d do that b---h”) while I grind my teeth and debate whether to say something, let it go, laugh it off, or begin loudly singing a song about cadaver scrotums or something ·     Too dirty and smelly here ·     I miss the air, trees, stars, animals, people who smile ·     Independent stores ·     Always have to be on the lookout for people who are potentially dangerous (maybe it’s just me, but this is how I do things) ·     Too expensive ·     The misery of public transportation (riding with too many people/unstable people/dangerous people/obnoxious people/loud people/extraordinarily smelly people and trains that simply don’t go anywhere on weekends) ·     Too many migraines (current working theory is that – despite there being many triggers – they MAY decrease in a more rural, calm environment) ·     I want to be in a community of people who care passionately about the environment, social justice, eco-consciousness, and peace, and who like to roast parsnips and sing rounds together ·     I want to raise my future children in the country, not the city (although I wish they could have some of what the city offers) ·     I will be closer to my mom ·     I can swim in a lake in the summer, instead of in a polluted ocean with 60,000 New Yorkers ·     I can finally get a dog

Dear New York….

Sigh.

Love,

Kate

And after six days of Tibetan Buddhism...

...I am still not practicing lovingkindness NEARLY enough.

I was so lucky to have had the gift of unemployment (no, really) during the week that the American Museum of Natural History was hosting my Tibetan Buddhist teacher as part of its Brain exhibit (specifically on Brain and the Tibetan Creative Mind).
http://www.amnh.org/calendar/event/Living-in-America:-Brain-and-the-Tibetan-Creative-Mind/
I was able to attend three out of the four meditations that my teacher led, and to generally be among Tibetan monks and Buddhist practitioners, and to think deeply about Buddhist practices. It definitely changed a lot of things for me, and has made me approach a few people and challenges differently. But guess what? IT'S STILL HARD. It is still so hard to be a human being interacting with other human beings. All of us imperfect and cranky and tired and hungry and sometimes with sore feet and sometimes being elbowed out of the way... One evening, Khen Rinpoche was leading this amazing meditation - in the Hayden Planetarium, thank you very much - and a woman was sitting on the floor and all of these folks kept coming in late (so, so late) and they had to push past/climb over her to get to the few remaining empty seats, and finally she got so angry she really stomped up the aisle and sat down in a chair and you could see it took her quite a while to shake it off. She was literally shaking her head in anger every few seconds. I kept thinking how ironic it was that she had so much anger during this meditation session, and that she couldn't recognize that none of the people had meant her any harm with their actions; they were just late and anxious and clumsy. On the other hand, I was so distracted, and was watching her, and judging her, and judging the late people, etc. etc. and missing out on these beautiful esoteric instructions for imagining the Buddha on four thrones sitting on eight lions. So: I still have to practice.

Big time.

There were many other experiences, both enlightening and disheartening, but this is just the description in brief. And all week, it made me think about alternate names for the blog and for myself...Muttering Buddhist, Cranky Buddhist, Bitchy Buddhist, Completely Unsuccessful Buddhist, Not There Yet, Buddhist With An Uzi (this only happens when I ride the subway, honest)...

The goal, however, is to really, truly, begin a regular meditation practice. I was happy to learn one new meditation practice, and in addition, to get instruction on tonglen, which I've been drawn to before but feel that I've done incorrectly. Perhaps having written it down on this here blog - even though no one yet knows it exists - will make me a bit more accountable to the universe, and will help me get started.

(The image is from http://www.freewebs.com/dharmabeads/initiations.htm)