On September 10, 2009, I sat on the steps of a random church with my friend of 10 years. I had not done this with her since our youthful days at Stuyvesant, when we often found ourselves cutting class only to go to the school library. She was fasting, so we couldn't peep into the cafes tucked away on Irving Street. We were both headed in different directions but we had agreed to meet because I was here, back in this city, after a month of fasting from New York. I was coming down from 167th and 8th, the Morgan Stanley Children's Hospital, where my other friend was induced into labor. In my hands, I carried a Trader Joe's bag full of sweets, cookies that my husband liked to eat. I had just bought Victor Hugo's The Hunchback of Notre Dame for $2--thats $2 more than I had reason to spend, especially for a book that I didn't have time to read.
In her hands, my friend held a Strand bag. She asked me, "Can I show you what I bought?" I continued my litany of doubts, confusions, thoughts. I bombarded her with questions, the same questions I've asked before but that I assumed would have different answers. I pounded her with details, heavy and light, family, and school, weddings and school, love and school. I kept insisting on one thing and that was graduate school. I insisted that there was a strict timeline and I needed to get on the track before I became another "intelligent woman gone to waste" the refrain from Azhar Nafisi's memoir.
She asked again. "Can I show you what I bought?" I plowed through my self-centered dialogue. We came to publishing. I need to learn about publishing I concluded at some point. I jotted down the notes in my red Melanie-notebook. (Yes, I named my notebook.)
I talked about attending the Idealist Graduate Fair and encouraged her to come with me. She refused.
She showed me her books and I felt for the briefest moment, centered and calm. I remembered how in our youth many of our conversations were centered on books. She would share what she learned, and pass on her books to me. She still had some of my books--a five year lending period. I felt the breeze. I breathed. I noted the scene. And I began to listen.
One book was poetry from a Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. I had never heard of him, but the second book by Margaret Atwood sounded familiar, though I had not read any of her work either. She described the content and context of these books. She described the poet, his biography, his past work that she had read. She talked about his understanding of faith. I felt a love for her then, as I've felt for her over the years. I felt a gratitude that in the midst of this chaotic city, I had found my mate. And she was describing what she loved. It was how he wrote about faith, she said. It was how he described faith in an age of nihilism that was profound. As for Atwood, she wrote from a perspective of Penelope that no one had considered for the 1000 years that students had been reading the Iliad. No one had bothered to give voice to Penelope. This was the foundation for our work: faith and feminism. It was at the core of what she purchased, what she absorbed and what she shared. My friend offered a brief moment of clarity and a renewed sense of what was potentially possible.
"In my poetry I frequently display a desire to settle in my native city, spend my life there with a woman I love as my wife, walk to the corner cafe and meditate on the word 'is,' " Czeslaw Milosz had said. I had often a desire to settle in New York, spend my afternoon with a woman I love as my friend, walk to the corner cafe (but not eat) and think about the copula. How strange.
In her hands, my friend held a Strand bag. She asked me, "Can I show you what I bought?" I continued my litany of doubts, confusions, thoughts. I bombarded her with questions, the same questions I've asked before but that I assumed would have different answers. I pounded her with details, heavy and light, family, and school, weddings and school, love and school. I kept insisting on one thing and that was graduate school. I insisted that there was a strict timeline and I needed to get on the track before I became another "intelligent woman gone to waste" the refrain from Azhar Nafisi's memoir.
She asked again. "Can I show you what I bought?" I plowed through my self-centered dialogue. We came to publishing. I need to learn about publishing I concluded at some point. I jotted down the notes in my red Melanie-notebook. (Yes, I named my notebook.)
I talked about attending the Idealist Graduate Fair and encouraged her to come with me. She refused.
She showed me her books and I felt for the briefest moment, centered and calm. I remembered how in our youth many of our conversations were centered on books. She would share what she learned, and pass on her books to me. She still had some of my books--a five year lending period. I felt the breeze. I breathed. I noted the scene. And I began to listen.
One book was poetry from a Polish Nobel Laureate Czeslaw Milosz. I had never heard of him, but the second book by Margaret Atwood sounded familiar, though I had not read any of her work either. She described the content and context of these books. She described the poet, his biography, his past work that she had read. She talked about his understanding of faith. I felt a love for her then, as I've felt for her over the years. I felt a gratitude that in the midst of this chaotic city, I had found my mate. And she was describing what she loved. It was how he wrote about faith, she said. It was how he described faith in an age of nihilism that was profound. As for Atwood, she wrote from a perspective of Penelope that no one had considered for the 1000 years that students had been reading the Iliad. No one had bothered to give voice to Penelope. This was the foundation for our work: faith and feminism. It was at the core of what she purchased, what she absorbed and what she shared. My friend offered a brief moment of clarity and a renewed sense of what was potentially possible.
"In my poetry I frequently display a desire to settle in my native city, spend my life there with a woman I love as my wife, walk to the corner cafe and meditate on the word 'is,' " Czeslaw Milosz had said. I had often a desire to settle in New York, spend my afternoon with a woman I love as my friend, walk to the corner cafe (but not eat) and think about the copula. How strange.
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