Where is Home?

One of my "homes," the Upper West Side of Manhattan, as seen from the Central Park Reservoir running path (practically another one of my homes) on a hot sticky July day.  

That does sound like I'm about to start a laundry list of summer, winter, ski, beach, European, Asian, Hawaiian, Caribbean, etc., abodes that might appear in Architectural Digest as among the numerous residences of the rich and famous.  No, that's not it (because if it was, the sticky July summer home would most certainly NOT be in Manhattan).  

No, again, it's that this morning (from the comfort of my air-conditioned apartment), I watched a TED Talk by Pico Iyer entitled "Where is Home?"  And it really (as the theater folk say) landed.  It has caused me to think about aspects of my life upon which I never focused, being as wrapped up as I was in living it.

Let's give it some thought together, shall we?  Born where?  Parents from where?  Grew up where?  Attended school/college where?  Married where?  Early adult working years where?  Spouse/partner from where?  Raised the kids where?  Working/living now where?  Happy place(s) where?  Ethnic group influences?  Religious group influences?  

If the answers to the above questions are more than a few, like I realized they are with me, then you'll begin to understand Pico Iyer's point.  One of the beauties of his presentation is that home is wherever you take yourself, and that these movements, somewhat "outside" yourself, allow you to find yourself.  He does it much better than I, and that's why he gives the TED Talk and I am then so moved by it that I write a blog post.

And thus, the more time I am away from the place I've called home for over 30 years, and the more I find "myself" elsewhere (and for me now, that's primarily Paris), the more I, too, realize that home is me.  And that all of my life, my residences past and present, my children, my friends and family, my passions and interests, make up my home, wherever I am.  

I also realize that the people I meet who have lived likewise, even if so many other aspects of their particular backgrounds do not mesh with mine, are immediately recognizable to me.  

On a macro level, of course, I begin to see how this globalized culture is changing, and will continue to change, how we see the world, how we choose our friends and mate, where we choose to live, what we choose to do in our lives.  It is a very exciting thing to me, though it might simply elicit a shrug of the shoulders of those in the generations younger than mine.  It's just normal for them - kids born of parents from different parts of the world or of different religions or backgrounds, and then living in a few places and perhaps speaking two or more languages as a native, going to college with people from all over the world and, thus, moving so fluidly (and enviably to me) among their peers, similarly raised.  

Home - the place we come to feel secure and safe, but now also the place we learn and grow and expand our horizons and stretch our comfort zones.  That is quite a definition change, but not if home is "us." 

Quotable Coco

On the plane from Beijing to Newark, I got my tiny dose of France and French for the week in the form of the film "Coco Before Chanel," a French film released in 2009 that I somehow missed.

It made for the most pleasant two of the thirteen and a half hours of the flight.  (I watched another movie later in the flight, but by then I had lost too many brain cells to altitude boredom and, for the sake of my educated adult respectability, I shall not repeat the name of the insipid rom-com fluff that at least helped keep me - for another two hours - from looking up every few minutes at that nasty bright blue monitor on the bulkhead telling me how high we were flying, how inhumanly cold it was beyond the confines of our large flying metal tube and how many more hours we'd (hopefully) continue to do the same.  Can you tell that I'm not a big lover of flying?)

So, thank you for in-flight entertainment, Continental Airlines.

More than midway through the film, the wealthy man who has taken Coco into his home remarks off-handedly, upon seeing her shorn of her formerly waist-length raven hair, "A woman who cuts her hair, is about to change her life."  From her look in response, we in the audience know that she knows this to be true, too, but how will that change take shape?  Perhaps she knows, perhaps not.  Either way, it was a moment that made me smile, as a fellow recently "shorn" woman with changes taking shape in her life.

That quote from the film reminded me that Coco Chanel was responsible for some pretty good quips during her life.  Here are a few I particularly like:

"A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous." 

 "In order to be irreplaceable, one must always be different." 

"Don't spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door. " 

"How many cares one loses when one decides not to be something but to be someone."  

"Elegance is not the prerogative of those who have just escaped from adolescence, but of those who have already taken possession of their future." 

"To achieve great things, we must first dream."

Ah, to dream, to be classy, to be fabulous (whatever that means!), to be different, to stop beating on walls, to deserve to be elegant, and to decide to be someone.  Such pressure!  Great quotes, but maybe a bit unattainable?  Perhaps I'll just try to live by this much-easier-to-achieve quote by Coco Chanel:

"A woman should wear perfume wherever she wants to be kissed." 

That I can handle.

Sidewalk Philosophy

Sidewalk path in Central Park

I've been seeing these around Central Park from time to time.  This one was alone; at least it's all I saw on my run to the Reservoir the other day.  However, there are other times I've seen one after another of this sort of drawing consisting of motivational philosophy - and fish - along my walk, with practically a story to follow that develops along the way.  

Since this was the second time I encountered this, I figured it's no fluke (bad pun intended).  And so I did a little research and came to learn about James De La Vega.  He's quite known already as a New York street muralist.  He's executed more complex wall art in other parts of town. 

I also found interesting video of De La Vega creating sidewalk art on Fifth Avenue during the 2009  Museum Mile Festival (an annual June evening when the museums along Fifth Avenue are open late, admissions are free and the avenue becomes a pedestrian walk).  See it here.

I'll be on the lookout now for more, and I'm sure to become motivated to post what I find.

Poem for June 17, 2011

Risk
And then the day came, when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to Blossom. Anaïs Nin

Midnight in Paris

Love this poster!  Also, the film was pas mal.  It's kind of like the poster, which is pretty, colorful, whimsical and charming.  It's not "Annie Hall," "Manhattan" or even "Vicky Christina Barcelona."   (I am a huge fan, but a bit picky about my favorites.)  That said, however, my smile muscles had a workout, and I felt warm all over after.  In a light way, the movie implores us to live our genuine lives, find our dreams and follow them, perhaps even giving up security, status, money and convention along the way.  And the movie, again lightly, acknowledges through disapproving and disbelieving family members that such a path can alienate  those same folks (as if life's not hard enough!).   On the other hand, it is entirely possible that the movie didn't say all those things and that it's just a simple comedy.  And, if so, well, that was just my take.  Perhaps I was simply making the whole thing up in order to fulfill my own dreams.

Carry On

On a gloomy day, it's hard to keep writing about the somewhat superficial things that are the icing to our daily cake.  I love icing, mind you.  To me, it's not just a gooey, sweet disguise to cover the real deal underneath; nope, the cake wouldn't interest me at all without it.  And the more and darker chocolate, the better (or cream cheese icing on carrot cake, which I still dream about).

New York today is a gloomy one, though, and apparently just one of a full week of them we can expect around here.  Au contraire, however, is Paris, which I know has had a fabulous and warm spring (unless you're a farmer, in which case it's too dry, this year, but there will be other years for the farmers).  

There is something about adulthood which offers so much, opens so many doors to much that is so beautiful, if we want to find it.  But it also permits us to push aside the curtain behind which the "man behind the curtain" resides, pulling the levers and cables that control the sounds, lights, smoke and mirrors that are there to distract us.

And yet, as we know (and likely had nightmares about - I know I did - the first few times we watched "The Wizard of Oz" - fyi, I firmly believe that movie should be R-rated), the man behind the curtain controls nothing but the distractions.

I apologize for the gloomy post today.  When I began this blog in April, I felt it would be my outlet to display only beautiful and pleasurable events and surroundings which are always so much more enhanced when shared.  I learned this through the joy and sharing of dear friends, some of whom live far away and some of whom I will no longer see in this life.  They taught me that the joy of the new discovery is multiplied in the sharing of it.  And so, selfishly, I share with you what pleases me through the posts I've created to date.

Life is more than that, of course, and life at its most difficult is when we need people in our lives the most, as well.  Today is one of those days, as I watch the rain that came down suddenly, quick, hard and loudly, almost as if the skies burst into tears.

There are no pictures for it.  At its most difficult, it is simply incomprehensible.  I can't even get a picture in my mind, much less in a camera.

And then there is nothing left to do but carry on.  Enjoy what's there in front of us, hold the people dear to us, try to sleep a good sleep, and wake up to another day.  I guess.

Blackbird

With thanks to the Beatles for today's inspiration, after seeing "Rain" on Broadway the other night (no, not really recommending it unless you're just crazy for the Beatles, but it did remind me of how much I've loved so many of their songs and, damn, how many lyrics I still have completely memorized over 50+ years).  And it also gave me a real jolt of realizing how differently their words resonate at my current age than they did when they were first heard by my much younger (and probably also less aurally-challenged) ears.  I'm sure you know what I mean.  

Read these and see if there's not a moment that rises up in your memory, or a tough moment in fact right now, that is warmed, comforted and perhaps strengthened just a little bit, to "fly" by these very simple words - 

"Blackbird"

(Lennon/McCartney)

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these sunken eyes and learn to see
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to be free.

Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird fly Blackbird fly
Into the light of the dark black night.

Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
You were only waiting for this moment to arise.

I took this photo in the Galapagos - that bird soared!

Spring Fever

Birds do it, bees do it...

Even jaded New Yorkers do it -

and even the driving rain yesterday didn't cause this smile-and-sigh inducing poster taped to a wall on a side street in Chelsea to wilt and collapse in yet another puddle.

Don't you just want to know what happened with these two people, and what may yet still?

seen taped onto a wall in Chelsea, April 23, 2011