Tiptoeing back into the fold

I’ve been so unmotivated to bare heart and soul here. I worry that anything I write can be used against me if things take even worse turns, because let’s face it, there’s very little daylight between what’s happening here and what happened a century ago in another place, as we’ve read and seen the memoirs, novels, documentaries, films, and histories of that “never again” darkness that has come again. Things get quiet sometimes, because the once-incisive press has largely been silenced. We still get a facsimile of the news 24/7, but the true horrors unfolding for some people, those stories are hidden, ignored, or go unreported. We glimpse the tip of the terror when it bubbles over, before it’s suppressed again, and the news cycle moves on, the zone gets flooded, and we don’t know where to put our attention. So I don’t know how to write here anymore. This place used to be where I could play. And process my crazy. And whine and opine to my heart's content. Now it is where I could wittingly or unwittingly burn everything down. 

Melodramatic much?

But is seems I’ve been reawakened by the wave of euphoria that swept through my city these last few weeks. The Knicks parade is today. My kids and their loves are already out there this morning, lining up to cheer for the national champions. And I’m here, attempting to record, at least pictorially, some of what I would have posted about if I hadn’t been too numbed out from trying to get through the news cycles, as surface level as they are, these past several weeks. I’ve had my head down working too—I just delivered the first two thirds of the book I’m editing, and am now on the final lap there. I'm working with another lovely subject, I am so fortunate, really, in who I've been able to partner with on these projects. I'm working with a man this time, an actor with an unprotected heart, which makes me love him; the ones who feel the world too deeply, they are my tribe. 

My previous book is also going through the production stages at the publisher, so there’s still periodic work coming through for that—I had to write a new epilogue, for example, due to a recent exciting and audacious development in my subject’s life, plus there's the copyedit read, the legal read, first pass pages, cover and interior designs, the whole nine. I also got asked to profile a subject for the cover of a magazine, which frankly had me hyperventilating, I had only a week to do the interview and write the story, I feared I wouldn't do the person justice, but that’s done and delivered now, and the subject and the editors were happy, so I'm breathing normally again. 

Let's see, since last I posted:

1. We celebrated Mother's Day with brunch at my daughter’s place in Brooklyn. The usual suspects came. My daughter’s husband made the most beautiful bouquets for his mom and me. It included all my favorite flowers, orchids, ranunculus, and tulips. Swoon.

2. This darling little one turned three years old at the end of May! And at the end of July, she and her lovely parents will officially have relocated from Dallas, Texas, and be living in Brooklyn, New York. She's enrolled in school, their new apartment lease is signed and they get the keys on July 22.

3. I completed the refresh of the back bedroom of our apartment, which involved finally pulling up the 25-year-old carpet in there, and laying new floors. I also had the broken blinds replaced, the walls spackled and painted anew, and my girl and I got rid of ten garbage bags worth of stuff from the bookshelves alone (my kids took things of theirs they wanted to keep to their homes). On my birthday my daughter and I chose a new rug to go in there, which I absolutely love. I work in that room a lot now, sitting in the recliner with my laptop, and then coming down and feeling that soft plush rug under my feet. At first, my daughter was saying I needed to get new shelves and beds, and even new bedding but I disagree. Now that the bookshelves are vastly less burdened, I'm perfectly happy with my mother's former bed with it's old timey romanticism, and my daughter's childhood wrought iron trundle bed, they both hold very fine memories. Here's a picture but it doesn't really capture the serene feel of the room or the gentle quality of the light in there. 

Now all I have left in this room-by-room house refresh that I embarked on five years ago is our master bedroom. I have no idea how to start!

4. And this just in! The kids just texted the group chat this pic from the Knicks victory celebration parade this morning. More than one million people are out there, many of them having lined up before daybreak. Go Knicks! What a time to be a New Yorker!

Collective Effervescence

I cannot tell you how much joy washed over my city as we watched our Knicks basketball team march to the championship win last Saturday night. Watch parties all over the city, in restaurants and bars, on sidewalks and in parks, on rooftops and in backyards and living rooms, block party cookouts with everyone invited, music blaring, people dancing, everyone sharing in the same euphoria, differences erased, and in between games, we met each other as members of one tribe, regardless of outward appearance, background, circumstance, we shared this beautiful possibility, with our wonderful young mayor as the cheerleader in chief, reminding us that we are indeed one, all of us making up the whole magical idea that is New York City. God, we needed this joy. We needed to come together like this. We needed to remember that, as one Luis Jonathan Hernandez put it in a post on instagram, "Joy is not a break from the work. Joy is the work."

"When a system wants you defeated," Hernandez wrote, "your joy becomes a problem for that system. A people who can still gather, still feast, still dance in the streets, still love each other out loud, is a people that has not be conquered. That is why joy is resistance. Not only because it feels good, though God knows it does. Because it is proof. Proof that we are still here, still together, still ungovernable by their fear."

It was incandescent, what New Yorkers experienced en masse as we watched Jalen Brunson, Karl Anthony Towns, OG Anunoby, Josh Hart, and all the rest never give up, even when the situation looked hopeless, watched them be mentally tough enough to scrap their way to victory, coming back from a 29-point deficit in one game to win by one point with one second to go! New York just about fell ouuuut! Good God it was magnificent! The whole city roared! 

Apparently, there's a name for what just happened here. It's called Collective Effervescence. Here's the science, from sociologist Emile Durkheim, as explained by a trauma therapist named Susan Zinn on social media—I'm quoting her because she explains it better than I can right now—"When thousands of people feel the same emotion at the same time—joy, hope, belonging—something extraordinary happens inside your body. Your heart rhythms synchronize with strangers. Your nervous system wakes up. You feel alive in a way you forgot was possible. Sociologist Émile Durkheim named this in 1912. He noticed that humans are fundamentally transformed when they gather around something larger than themselves. A ritual. A belief. A shared purpose."

She points out that New Yorkers haven't had a Knicks championship win since 1973, and now, it's happened. "Fifty-three years of waiting. And then—the thaw. Most of us have been living in Functional Freeze. Functioning perfectly and managing everything, and feeling almost nothing. Last night, New York reminded us what we’ve been starving for."

The Man