Meandering Through Artifacts

The beach glass is a scarred old cloud, frosted like a flat lump of rock candy, and embedded with crisscrossing wires. They were supposed to prevent the glass from breaking, but it broke anyway, and the waves on Brighton Beach pounded it soft and smooth. A little seawater seeped inside the glass, rusting the wires. I found it at the water’s edge after the tide ran out, and kept it in my jewelry box, a mile from the ocean.

I’ll put it in my pocket and visit the New York Aquarium in Coney Island. Maybe I’ll throw it into the sand before I go and see the walruses. Maybe I’ll return it to the ocean. Will it be sad to leave the safety of its home among my baubles, or will it splash and sink, snug and sound into the surrounding sea?

The walruses resemble the drawing on my refrigerator magnet but the walruses themselves are in-your-face real. The enormous male’s courtship habits, if you can call them that, are crude and to the point. He seems drawn to hunter green and follows the dark uniform shirts of the Aquarium docents.

Maybe I’ll go to the Botanic Garden next week, for the Chili Pepper Fiesta. I can just taste a hot chili pepper on my tongue. A chunk of solid fire, it ignites my taste buds, making the food seem to sizzle in my mouth. There will be African drumming, Cajun music and Cajun food. Sad, that New Orleans has been flooded twice, and no dove returned. Their traditions, expatriate now, visit Brooklyn for a little while at the Fiesta.

I leave the beach and ride the B68 bus north on Coney Island Avenue. Russian immigrants from Brighton Beach and Sheepshead Bay converse as we travel. Someone left a tattered orange voting card on the seat beside me. Against the blue seat, it looks like a patch on the seat of someone’s jeans. The card is printed in English, Spanish, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. I puzzle over it. Why no Russian? A woman shakes her head to emphasize her speech, earrings clacking. They are castanets, and her husband beside her dances to their beat.

I get off at Avenue T and pass the elementary school. It’s called the School of Music. Through the lunchroom windows, glass shot through with wire, like the bit of beach glass in my pocket, comes the wail of off-tune violins. A red object catches my eye, lost among the crunched brown leaves at the entrance to the schoolyard. Is it a handball? No. It’s a red rubber heart, to squeeze in your hand for exercise or to pop up a vein so the doctor can slide a gleaming silver needle in. I squeeze it, idly, wondering if this constitutes aerobic exercise, and slide it into my pocket alongside the Brighton beach glass.

My Neighborhood

My block is an urban hodgepodge of buildings and styles. Two apartment buildings, one with a crenellated roof and fire escapes, the other with balconies outside the center apartments, face each other. The rest of the block is built up with private houses, some brick and some wooden. Many are detached houses with their own small landscaped front lawns, but a few are semi-detached. Three new private homes, solid Indian-red brick and much larger than the rest, supposedly belong to one wealthy family, brothers and sisters who have bought up land on the same street and built color-coordinated semi-mansions.

My block is quiet. I hear the humming of air conditioners, still needed on this first day of autumn, and the occasional whoosh of a car passing by on the avenue. As I approach the corner a chartreuse monk parrot squawks at me. I spot him on the phone wire, adjusting a twig in the large nest he and his family have built beside the transformer, to keep them warm in winter. Parrots in neighboring trees answer his chattering.

I round the corner and pass the home of a “survivor of the shield.” Her policeman husband was killed in the line of duty, as her license plate advertises. This woman decorates her home elaborately at each holiday, but so far, her Halloween decorations are not out and the house seems curiously naked without its usual display.

An older Asian woman holding a little girl’s hand passes me on the street. The woman shields herself from the sun with an oversized navy and white plaid umbrella. The little girl carries a red backpack. She’s probably done with pre-kindergarten for the day.

As I reach the next corner the parrots’ raucous calls intensify. Here there is a larger nest, and the parrots flit in and out of the trees around the perimeter of a small city park. Sometimes they land on the ground, a splash of green beside the drab pigeons and sparrows.

I cut through the park. The leaves have not turned yet but the ground is littered with crushed brown leaves. We have not had much rain. On the handball court, a young man of Asian descent, clad all in black, is smashing his handball against the wall. I wonder if he is supposed to be in school. A park attendant circles the park house, carrying a broom and dustpan. On the basketball court, another lone man, also Asian, dribbles a basketball.

In the playground, toddlers climb the equipment while grandparents watch. One group speaks Russian, another speaks Chinese, or Korean, or Japanese. I can’t easily tell the difference. I rarely hear English in this playground, except from some of the teenagers.

As I approach the main commercial drag on Avenue U, I see store signs and awnings in Chinese, Japanese, Russian, and other languages. Pakistani women in tunics and matching pants pass me, their heads scarved. Stricter Muslim women, clad in their burqas, wheel their babies in strollers. I hear every language but English on the next seven blocks as I head east.

I stop at an Asian supermarket and glance at the vegetables outside. The odor of fish wafts out from inside and I wrinkle my nose. Some of the vegetables are familiar: carrots, onions, green beans and scallions. But others are unrecognizable to the western eye. Some resemble elongated string beans, each one close to a yard long. There’s a long green vegetable that resembles a cross between a cucumber and a cactus. Fat green carrots and huge white radishes known as daikons are on sale beside the better-known bok choy and broccoli tops. The streets are thronged with Asian and East European shoppers, squeezing fruits, selecting the best string beans, and milling through the stores. This is a multilingual polyglot, Chinatown meets Little Tokyo meets Moscow on the Hudson. There’s even a Moscow on the Hudson Bakery.

Inside the supermarket, I find open bins full of beans, nuts and dried fruits. Glass jars hold mysterious roots selling for $60 a pound. I wonder what they are and what they are for; they must be something special at that price! I find twenty-five pound bags of rice and small packages of rice pasta. There are canned logans, lychees and water chestnuts, and pop top cans of coconut milk and grass jelly juice, whatever that is.

The variety of food around here is amazing. Besides the Asian supermarkets there are Russian groceries featuring Russian sausage and salami, Russian breads, bags of kasha and millet, both popular East European grains. There are abundant restaurants, too. I see Chinese restaurants and bakeries featuring sweet rolls and bubble tea, Vietnamese restaurants, and now a growing number of Japanese sushi and sashimi restaurants springing up. There are East European Caucasian restaurants, a Mexican restaurant and a new Malaysian one too. I’m expecting a Pakistani restaurant to open anytime now.

I leave the supermarket and head east. There is a fruit store on almost every block, sometimes one on each corner. Outside a discount clothing store, women pick through a table with a rainbow of cotton panties. When I read the sign I realize why they are so intent: the panties are on sale, three for a dollar. I join a blonde with an East European accent and we sort through the panties. Soon we discover the reason they are so cheap. The sizes are not correctly marked.

I eat lunch in Spiro’s Restaurant, a Greek coffee shop. A couple of booths away, I overhear a woman telling her lunch companion about her high blood pressure, her arthritis, and an operation on her elbow. At another booth, two middle-aged blondes are discussing hurricanes Katrina and Rita. At last, conversations I can understand and eavesdrop on! The restaurant is small, with one long row of booths and two shorter ones. The walls are painted pastel pink surrounded by wood paneling, and a mirror overlooks each booth. Slightly bedraggled silk flowers in vases adorn each formica tabletop, and on the walls are small prints by Monet. Piped in music plays the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

On the way home I notice the streets are quieter until I reach Ocean Avenue. St. Edmunds High School has let out, and girls in white blouses and pleated gray miniskirts wait at the bus stop. Orthodox Jewish girls from the nearby Mesivta cross the street, their concealing black skirts brushing their ankles.

My block remains quiet when I return. A young man wearing a backpack rollerblades past and the sound of his skate wheels breaks the near-silence. Even the parrots don’t chatter as I past beneath their nest. It is two-thirty and at three, the public schools will let out. Then the streets will ring with children’s voices again.

The Synagogue

Last night the family attended the first Friday night synagogue service we have attended in years. We went to the temple we used to belong to years ago, and left when we could no longer afford both membership there and in the humanist church we joined around the same time.

About a week and a half ago, maybe on September 7th or 8th, I had lunch in Burger King. When I was on the line waiting for my order, I saw a man I vaguely recognized, and thought he looked very pale and unwell. It turned out he was Alan, a man we'd known from the synagogue. He and his wife Maddy were there having lunch with their grandchildren. Actually it must have been on Tuesday the 6th because now I remember, I said to Maddy that the kids would be back in school in two days. She was pleased because the boy was being a handful and acting spoiled and whiny.

I sat down with them and asked how the synagogue was going. They were both enthused about it and said it had merged with a third reform temple and was now meeting in Boro Park. They encouraged us to come to an open house on September 11th. We talked about the possibility of reforming a youth group, about the women's group, the brotherhood, all sorts of activities there. They did say they needed more membership, well, what religious organization doesn't?

Anyhow Maddy and Alan were so friendly that I thought about checking the place out again. I also felt that it was somehow a sign from God that I should try the synagogue, or at least, putting something else in my path as I have been thinking about us leaving the humanist church.

We have been so angry and so negative about what is going on at the church that I've felt for some time now that we need to start dissociating ourselves from it. It is not spiritually enriching us, in fact right now it is just the opposite. It is dragging us down into negative emotions.

So it seemed like an illustration of the saying, one door closes and another door opens. I talked to Rick and he agreed somewhat unenthusiastically to try it out.

When we went to the open house, everyone was very friendly. Most of the people there were from the old synagogue that we belonged to (and in fact, Rick used to belong to the third syagogue where the congregation is now meeting, years before he met me). Maddy was there for a few minutes but left to visit Alan, who was in the hospital. I wasn't surprised as I'd been shocked by how pale he looked. She said it wasn't anything serious, just some arhythmia.

Last night after dinner Rick, Rick Jr. and I headed over to the synagogue. It's in a Hasidic area and lots of Hasidic men were strolling about on their way to services, clad in their black frock coats and fur hats. I often wonder why they don't die of heat stroke in summer.

When we reached the synagogue I immediately went into the ladies room. As I emerged from the stall I heard two women talking in horrified and grief-stricken tones about a man's death. Immediately I knew they meant Alan though I didn't hear his name. I came out, and one woman was crying in the other's arms. They apologized to me, since neither of them recognized me.

I said, "I think I know who you are talking about." Sure enough, it was Alan. He'd come home from the hospital but then collapsed in the house and either died in the ambulance or on arriving at the hospital.

This gave me an eerie feeling. Why should I have run into him again after not seeing him for so many years, receive encouragement from him and his wife to visit the synagogue again, and then never see him alive again? It seems like a sign and it seems like the last thing he was meant to accomplish. Since I don't believe in accidents I feel it had to be a sign to me. Also I had a strong premonition that he wasn't well and in fact, when I saw him, I thought to myself that he looked like a ghost.

At the service, I felt comfortable although I couldn't quite read Hebrew fast enough to totally keep up. Maybe a refresher is a good idea. I give Rick Jr. credit, he tried to follow along at least in English.

The brief sermon was interesting, basically the rabbi was saying that we shouldn't neglect our bodies because we are made in God's image and it is an offense to God to desecrate what resembles God. (I notice that to be politically correct they keep saying God instead of Him). The rabbi went further and said that our bodies don't belong to us but to God and we are just holding them as tenants and stewards and are expected to give them back in good condition. He also blamed the overriding religious traditions in America, which downplay the body as bad and to be transcended, for the amount of bodily neglect and self harm that Americans demonstrate.

Maybe that's what I needed to hear because I have been pretty bad with my diet ever since the wedding. I wonder if that would work as a thought to keep in mind when I am trying to resist gobbling junk food? Maybe it would, I can try it.

In any case it was strange to hear about Alan's death and feel as if I met him again at exactly the right time for something important to be accomplished in my life. I don't think the universe revolves around me and certainly he meant much more to his wife and family and his closer friends, but somehow if a person's actions send out ripples in a pond, his ripples reached me at the last moment in his life and have made a difference. In a way it is similar to the effect Richard had on me in his own last months of life.

At the kiddush after the service, Rick got into a conversation with a man who was a childhood friend of his father. Lester was saying that he has his doubts about whether God exists and he pointed to the situation with Alan, dying at the relatively young age of 70. Why should such a good man be taken, he asked. I wonder, if Alan hadn't completed all that he came here to do. And was getting me to check out the synagogue one of the last things he'd come here to do? What a thought.

I don't expect to join the synagogue at least not right away. I'm not ready for a relationship on the rebound. But I'll certainly go back from time to time. I do acknowledge synchronicity and try to follow the path laid out for me, and it seems that revisiting this synagogue is definitely on that path.

Going last night, the week before Mom's Yahrzeit, also gave me the chance to say Kaddish for her, which I have not done in many years. It has always been a curious thing to me, that the prayer for the dead, spoken by those in mourning, says nothing about death and loss but only speaks of God's goodness and greatness.