Noo Yawker

I was sitting in a little deli opposite the local Hilton just yesterday. Sitting opposite me was my corvid friend from NYC. He was telling me things I hadn't heard before.

"There's a kind of controlling, power-hungry authoritarianism in charge at that place. Well, you had a learning experience, and everything's good now! I'm glad that you've moved on."

He went on to describe the details of a few things. As always, he offered a balanced view. Claim, counterclaim, justification, defence, everything. Then he told me, "This may be the last year of the program. It's kinda sad because this is our 20th year. But funding's low. The NYT might be closing down."

It was a sad moment. I felt despondent — for a fraction of a second.

He continued, "I'll be retiring soon though, and so will my wife, and I'll be coming out to visit old friends and I might even bring my dawwter with me, she's all grown-up now. We'll do a kind of retirement world tour..."

And the world looked right again.

New York State Of Mind

The funny thing is that I never thought of myself as particularly enamoured of America, or at least the United States thereof. But I have visited several of the 48 contiguous mainland states, and I've tasted life there in the West, the East and the Middle (or is that the East, the West and the Midwest?) and Tennessee (I guess that's South, or is it 'mid-South'?)

But I miss New York the most, I think. Its amazing variety of peculiar life, deep history and melting-pot culture continues to inform and surprise me. It was the gateway to America for many people, many peoples; it continues to be one of the maybe two or three greatest cities of the world.

Part of it, I suppose, has to do with people like Billy Joel. Part of it has to do with odd stuff like this: a cheat-sheet to life in NYC. The only other city I've met which has enough depth for a multi-cultural mythology of its own is London, and that isn't fair because it was probably a Stone Age settlement along the Thames, occupied by wave after wave of immigrants or invaders.

Well, here's Mr Joel's take on his hometown:

Some folks like to get away, take a holiday
From the neighborhood
Hop a flight to Miami beach or Hollywood.
I'm taking a Greyhound on the Hudson River line—
I'm in a New York state of mind.

I've seen all the movie stars in their fancy cars
And their limousines,
Been high in the Rockies under the evergreens,
But I know what I'm needing and I don't want to waste more time—
I'm in a New York state of mind.

It was so easy living day by day
Out of touch with the rhythm and the blues,
But now I need a little give and take,
The New York Times, the Daily News...

It comes down to reality—and it's fine with me
'Cause I've let it slide,
Don't care if it's Chinatown or Riverside
I don't have any reasons, I've left them all behind—
I'm in a New York state of mind.

Well, there you have it.

Parity

I've always thought of myself as a New York City kind of person. A latent Manhattanite, if you like. And I know I can live in London and I don't mind retiring to Melbourne or Edinburgh or Cambridge. But then she-of-the-eyes did this memetic thing and I had to do it too for fun and the results are...

What City Should You Live In?
	You should live in Paris. The City of Lights will appeal to your appreciation of beauty and romance. You are a lover and a poet by nature, and Paris's sensitive charms will be a perfect match for yours.
Find Your Character @ BrainFall.com

I guess this means primus intra Paris. Yes, well that was a bad pun, I know. But it reflects (badly) my state of mind.

Your Choice Of Books

I've always had a soft spot for New York. If London is the Mother of Cities, then New York is its heir. And this particular competition is too fun not to try.

A Sense Of Wonder

I spent most of today marking essays. Tall ones, short ones, long ones, brief ones. It struck me that they all lacked one thing: a sense of wonder. I mean, here you have young men writing about God and philosophy and transformation and power and technology - and yet it sounds so dry, so dispassionate, so bloodless. The Greek word is anaimosarke - lacking blood and fleshly substance, and it is the adjective used in a very famous classical poem to describe the cicada, who is happy to be that way.

Yes, they lack a sense of wonder - a sense of numinosity - that deitropic sense which seeks and finds a hidden fundamental glory behind the apparent firmament of this world. Agnostic physicists have it; Feynman could marvel at how his simple diagrams of the subatomic world were so apt, so descriptive of the unseen. But where to find it, if they don't have it?

That's a serious problem. It goes beyond philosophy and sometimes, even religion. It goes beyond modern culture or society or whatever. I think that a sense of wonder only forms when two things happen: 1) the human entity realises how small it is, and 2) the same entity realises how big everything else might be. Note: 'might be' and ' not 'is'. If you know how big something is, then it isn't big enough, or perhaps it's really big and all that, but you have set the seal of finity on it, and it will someday end.

So I tried delving deep in me to find instances of that sense of the numinous. Where have I ever felt that, when, and why?

I found numerous examples. I shall share just one, though.

In my life of idle wandering, I have seen many comicbook heroes die. Some companies kill them off in huge numbers (maiming is sometimes almost as good) just to raise sales. I will talk about three. I saw Jean Grey (Phoenix) die - we all did, in X-Men #137 all those years ago; I saw Superman die, beaten and pounded to a pulp by Doomsday, on 18 Nov 1992. And I saw the Batman die, at the hands of his best friend, at the stroke of midnight and Frank Miller's pen.

I was saddened greatly by Phoenix's death, but she had killed a world, and besides, her Cyclops was there to mourn her and I closed the book and it was never as sad again. I was stunned by Superman's brutal demise, because he was Superman - Last Son of Krypton - and could never die; and of course, he didn't. But the one which kicked me in the guts was when a bruised Wayne crumpled in his armoured exoskeleton, the ultimate knight felled in his defence of a free land.

Why?

Because Batman was human, purely so. He had triumphed over evil, both within and without, with nothing but bare humanity and the excellence that can come with it. If he had ever taught anything to any of his colleagues, it was that humans can be much more than anythng humans can imagine; that a driven, focused, intelligent perseverance could be more telling than X-ray vision, an emerald ring or a golden lasso. I wept when Batman fell. He was the darkness in us that was also the dark before the dawn. Unlike Superman and Phoenix, he was really one of us - perhaps not the neighbour of our choice, but the defender who would always have our concerns at heart.

I saw a lot of the Batman in the defenders of New York three years ago. Helplessly, they watched loved ones die. Tirelessly, they fought to save the living, and they swore, 'Never again.' It was one shining moment which could only come out the darkness, the cape blackly flapping in the midnight wind of Gotham. And it was that moment, when humanity in all its frailty looked into the darkness and found light, that I felt again a certain sense of wonder - not certain, as in 'specific'; but certain as in 'sure and steadfast'.

As long as a sense of wonder remains to be evoked, humanity has hope. The true heroes are among us.

New York, New York

Three months ago, almost to the day, I and two friends arrived in New York. We were to be in Columbia University for 8 weeks for a research programme.

That was three months ago. Tonight, we are going out to remember the big city. "She is like a lady who demands to be embraced," said someone. We will remember her in all her honeyed sandstone eminence, in all her granite grit and mouthy manners. We miss her a lot. We think of her all the time. It is like Love, but it is more likely Liberty.

Why?

Because, unlike Singapore, she is a Lady.

Somewhere out there, on the 20th floor of East Campus Residential, I experienced some sort of apotheosis. Well, not quite a transformation unto godhood, but perhaps more an apocalypsis, an unveiling. We are all made in God's image, says God. Well, then we all seek to establish ourselves as gods. We can't manage it because we lack infinite resources, hence merely g and not G. The former is a variable, the latter is a constant for a given locus in spacetime. Or in the snowflake.

And so, I know that we are all Powers. Some greater, some lesser. The difference isn't one of degree, but one of capacity and potential. A Greater Power may have a lot of resources but not use them; a Lesser Power may become great given time. At the very least, we are Least Powers. Angels must all be Lesser Powers; they can probably use all their resources but can never aspire to the exalted place of Man. Or so their own boss's Manual says.

What I find interesting is that this Manual is consistent to a large extent. True, it may have odd (humanly-speaking) premises. But within the terms of those premises, it has a pretty consistent theology (or two). But that's a topic for a later date. For now, we remember the Lady, Love and Liberty. We remember December on its own, because in December, there is Noel.