New York Lists

1. List of Kindness

• The clanging, schreeching, and thumping of the subway. Things happen fast, nothing will wait for you. People are loaded and unloaded, lost and found; platforms are endless; letters, numbers, and arrows dance all around; public annoucements are cheerful but half-unintelligible. With people milling away from it, a train is about to jerk its heavy machinery into motion again, when the train operator sticks his head with the official hat out of the window, his upper body twisted at an awkward angle. He starts yelling agitatedly at someone ahead, evidently continuing some conversation they must have had minutes before: "Hey, get that one! Go, go, that's the train you want!" Silently thankful, the passenger at whom this volley of vociferous instructions was directed starts running towards the indicated doors, his head slightly cowering between shoulders, like a pupil reprimanded but never in a million years doubting the omniscience and good-will of his teacher... The train operator nods curtly, to no one in particular, and gets the train moving.

Thirteen Street Repertory Theatre

• It's a lovely, airy, early spring afternoon in Greenwhich. Looking for the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, we stroll through the lingering scent of yesterday's rain, and past small, quirky stores and cafés (we're passing by a "Paperie," which Martin -- whose half-forgotten Catholic demiurgs rise their sleepy heads -- glosses as "the place where they sell The Pope"). On our right, a building with glass walls, a centrifugal chaos of action deep inside, and "Dog Day Care" sign above. Naturally, we walk in, and as if drawn by a gigantic magnet, approach the glass partition, beyond which is a room with about 20 deliriously happy, tongue-hanging, ear-flapping dogs, chasing each other or running towards their guard: a thin, tall, dreadlocked man in his 30s. One of the excited dogs crouches, and leaves a little pile on the floor; other dogs quickly and curiously gather round the offensive heap, some sniffing it. The guard is there in a second, takes on a serious and semi-reproachful look, and yells out, "No, guys, no! --I got snacks for you over there." And he skilfully draws their attention away to the other corner. By now two other passers-by have strolled in from the street and are glued to the window with goofy smiles on their faces. The guard notices the small audience, and leads his protegés towards us in a controlled gallop. He stops right in front of us, puts his hand up against the glass at our eye level, pretending to offer treats, and the euphoric dogs prop up on their hind legs, leaning their front paws on the glass, a few centimeters away from our thrilled faces. The smaller ones jump up and bark their hellos. For a few seconds, the entire raucous menagerie is there, seemingly just for us. The guard smiles and nods his head briefly, curteously at us. His eyes are sparkling. He loves his job. And he just made our day.
  
  

• We're deep in the insides of a "Whole Foods" store in Chelsea. From a low-flying plane, we'd look like two dots surrounded by a continent of shelves, stacks, pyramids of foods. Everywhere you turn, vast expanses of colours, packaging, and labels spread into diminishing vistas, leaving you dizzy. If you don't know the store, finding a particular item quickly verges on the impossible. We're looking for cocoa nibs. We bumped into areas that could have been "right" (with all kinds of cooking chocolate, and cocoa) but no luck. Suddenly, an official person in the store uniform flits by, on some errand, and we stop her, asking for help. As she listens, her face opens up into a smile, and she swiftly transforms into a fairy, taking us here and there, exploring this avenue of shelves, or turning right at that crossroads of signs, in search of the desired product. After a while we feel bad for giving her so much trouble, so we thank her and go on looking for other things. We give up the idea of cocoa nibs, and 10 minutes later, we don't even remember any more that we wanted them. Suddenly, as when she first appeared, the fairy-assistant materializes again, holding something in her hand. It's not cocoa nibs, but it's something even better: peeled cocoa beans! She holds out the pack, and un unhurried smile -- we take both, and count our lucky stars.





• On the subway again. We're going to Coney Island, but we have no idea how to get there. It's the last stop on a few different lines in Brooklyn, but there's seemingly an inextricable maze of stops and changes that needs to be disentangled before. I'm standing in front of a subway map (and it is most certainly the "subway" -- once I was asking the man in the booth in one of the stations for directions and mentioned the word "metro" -- he just didn't get it until I realized my mistake and used "subway" instead of "metro"). It's an extended version of the map, one that includes the southern tips, and it takes quite an effort to interpret all the symbols representing various junctions, local or express trains... A discreet but firm tapping on my shoulder wakes me up from my helpless reverie: a girl sitting on the bench behind me looks up from behind her fringe with big, round, sincere eyes and says in the earnest voice of a dilligent student, "Where do you want to go?" I tell her, somewhat apologetically, almost guilty for attempting to go to Coney in March, when one still wears a hat or a scarf. She doesn't seem to mind, she is being simply helpful. She says to change trains at Atlantic Avenue (the way she pronounces it, it sounds like alanic avenue), and to catch an F train but to stay on this side (she repeats it twice). I thank her with a smile as big as an airplane (that seems to be the currency here), and 40 minutes later, we're walking into the ocean wind's outstretched arms on Coney Island Beach, sun-tanning seaguls and strolling Russians the only other visitors. And the beach is lovely, and long, and sparkling, and it's all ours.

2. List of Action

• We decide to explore the eastern edges and go see Chelsea Piers on the Hudson River. In a block next to a primary school, a small bunch of small, vibrantly-clad figures is forming a miniature road block. As we approach, we realize these are kids, 10 or 11 years old, with banners and posters. We stop and I ask them what it's all about. They suddenly get shy, and in answer, simply lift up their banners showing photographs of haggard-looking animals, and hand-drawn candy. A couple of them muster up enough public-speaking courage to tell us in simple sentences they are demonstrating against Hershey's because they test some chemicals on animals. I look at them admiringly and bemusedly, wondering if they actually know what they are doing... then I am instantly ashamed of that thought because of course they know what they are doing, they know very well, these kids... A memory of another bunch of kids floods me momentarily from head to toe, a sea of white hats and red scarves, and me one of them, Tito's pioneers, taking an oath in a huge sports arena -- and it lodges like a fish bone in my throat.





• A couple of days later, grown-ups are demonstrating in Union Square, against Bush and a war on Iran. Their colours and energies are darker, more somber, more vocal too. A thin trickle of protestants along the 14th street suddenly widens into a sizeable lake of human presence in the Square. They are holding blue banners with anti-war slogans, some are calling out messages to passers-by and inviting them to join in, and in the middle of it, as if presiding above everything, is Mother Death herself, all in black, and holding a dead child in her arms. The most chilling yet the most consistently overlooked, the most stubbornly forgotten symbol in the history of humanity.

• The city seems to fight many other, smaller battles. In the most renowned vegan restaurant "Angelica's Kitchen" in East Village, they are raising funds to help provide drinking water everywhere on the planet whose 70% is made up of water; in the 13th Street Repertory Theatre, the 91-year-old owner Edith O'Hara is fighting an epic legal battle against those who want her theatre brownstone building demolished; after a scintillating performance of Pinter's "The Homecoming" in the Cort Theatre on the 48th street, the actors quickly turn into fund-raisers with baskets for donations at the exit, for the retired actors' fund. All this in only 5 days we spent among New Yorkers.

3. List of Sleep
(Thank you, M.G.)