Tales of the Night Watchman is the story of three baristas and a city full of monsters. In The Steam Banshee Pt. 1, a Park Slope couple finds their quirky neighbor upstairs isn’t exactly living alone.
By Dave Kelly, Katrina Lord, Brett Hobson, Clare DeZutti, & DC Hopkins
111 places in Brooklyn that you must not Miss? It seems impossible to choose. A fiercely independent borough that, were it to be the separate city it was until 1898, would be competing with Chicago for third largest in the country, Brooklyn is headstrong about maintaining that individuality, despite becoming one of the most desirable destination points in the country, if not the world. The rents may have skyrocketed, but Brooklyn remains distinctly one-of-a-kind, with a rich and complex history that is tolerant of the different, the foreign, the weird.
But in my new guidebook, 111 Places in Brooklyn That You Must Not Miss (Emons Verlag), the story I felt it important to tell was of a Brooklyn that is less an undifferentiated mass— and, as a result, somewhat of an abstraction— than a collection of neighborhoods, each with its own character and history created by the people who’ve come here from all over the world. That energy is what drew me here from my small hometown in southern Ohio years ago. It’s what still drives people to come. Churning that diversity into something fresh and unique, something more than the sum of its parts, is what happens here. That is a tall order to capture.
I’ve attempted to curate an experience of our borough that will set readers on a path. It’s a path that meanders past sites like the Weeksville Heritage Center, where the story of one of the first communities of free blacks is preserved, or Pier 69, where a memorial remembers lives lost on September 11th. The journey continues to the doorstep of Brooklyn Owl, where your child can be transformed into a unicorn and “wear their magic” as they complete an in-store adventure, and Gotham Archery, where you can practice your axe-throwing form or transform into Katniss Everdeen with your bow.
In each of the next four issues, Park Slope Reader will feature three of my 111 places to provide a taste of those little known treasures, secret spots and unusual stories Brooklyn has to offer. Springtime is the theme of our first three chapters. Minutes away from Park Slope, Brooklyn Botanic Gardens provides a great setting for very welcome family days outdoors as daffodils, tulips and bluebells reveal their radiant blooms after the long gray winter. Be sure to checkout the venerable Caucasian wingnut there, which, though it sounds like a punchline, is a Brooklyn immigrant, too, arriving as a sapling in 1922 and now more than 45 feet tall. Spring is also the time for trying new things. Why not pay a visit to Jalopy Theatre and School of Music for a chance to learn to play that dusty guitar or banjo you inherited from your grandfather? Finally, spring can be a time when old things can have new life— which happens no place better than at Olly OxenFree Vintage, where a 1950s cocktail dress is ready to go on new adventures with you in it. As with all 111 places, springtime is about new beginnings. So, with book in hand, start exploring your borough like never before!
John Major, Author
Pterocarya fraxinifolia, the Latin name for the Caucasian wingnut, has none of the comic value of the more common English label for this arboreal rarity. Though conjuring notions of a political extremist, the name of this immense and august tree actually identifies it as a member of the walnut family from the mountainous region between the Black and Caspian Seas where Asia butts up against Europe. The species arrived in Europe in 1782, transported by a French naturalist.
Located just north of the Rock Garden in the area alongside Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn Botanic Garden’s (BBG) own goliath, characterized by its sizeable exposed root mass, is not difficult to find. Arriving from Rome as a sapling in 1922, BBG’s example now measures more than 45 feet in height and has a canopy that extends more than 60 feet (propped up on one vulnerable end), while its gnarled and knotty trunk spans 10 full feet in width. Catkins, a drooping flowering strand up to 20 inches in length, appear during the summer. A second tree, propagated from a cutting taken from this first tree, can be found near the Herb Garden.
A short walk away, just south of the Rock Garden, the Mountain Winterberry, a species from the Appalachians considerably closer to home, was one of the 12,000 plants original to the Botanic Garden when it opened in 1911. The nearby Chinese Parasol tree, so named for its large leaves that can grow to 12 inches in width, has been in residence here since 1925, a gift of the Yokohama Nursery in Japan.
For trees of a decidedly more diminutive sort, don’t miss the C.V. Starr Bonsai Museum. With over 350 specimens, about 30 of which are on display at any one time, BBG’s collection is one of the oldest and largest outside of Japan. One bonsai, a white pine, is more than 300 years old and was brought to Brooklyn from a Japanese mountainside more than 90 years ago.
Address: 990 Washington Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11225, +1 (718)623-7200, www.bbg.org | Getting there: Subway to Eastern Parkway–Brooklyn Museum (2, 3) or to Prospect Park (B, Q, S) | Hours: See website for summer, winter, and late-night hours | Tip: Inspired to do some gardening of your own? Check out Brooklyn Plantology (26 Brooklyn Terminal Market, 1510, Brooklyn, NY 11236, www.brooklynplantology.com) in Canarsie. At 20,000 square feet, this family-owned business offers a wide selection of seasonal outdoor and indoor plants, plus pots and gardening supplies.
“It’s called the Jalopy for a reason,” co-founder Lynette Wiley notes. “We’re not shiny and polished. We gamble that people will be open to our teachers’ ideas. We’re willing to say, ‘Let’s see what happens.’” Luckily, what often “happens” at Jalopy, both music school and performance space, is unique, even in a borough that prides itself on creativity and diversity.
Lynette and her husband Geoff arrived from Chicago in 2005 with the dream of creating a place where people of all ages, cultures, and abilities could feel at home. Classes and workshops are mostly in the early evenings or weekends. Kids programming (Jalopy Juniors) often ends with parents and children sharing a meal together. The stage becomes a place where musicians of many ethnic groups can interact. “Often, cultural groups only play for their own communities,” Lynette adds. “We give them a chance to experience each other.”
A month’s worth of performances might feature Indian raga, Mexican ranchera, and African drumming and skiffle. Author and actor Sam Shepard occasionally used to perform in a jug band here. Spirit Family Reunion and Blind Boy Paxton have graced Jalopy’s intimate stage. Classes, which have eight students maximum, are arranged in affordable eight-week sets, focusing on how to play particular instruments (guitar, fiddle, banjo, ukulele, and mandolin). No one is too inexperienced. Workshops on subjects like vocal harmony, slide guitar, or Balkan singing are also offered regularly. A small store has refurbished instruments for sale or rent.
“Put down your phone,” Lynette says warmly. “Come in, experience something, be in a room with other people. Just that idea of being present and quiet is tonic, especially for New Yorkers. That’s an education, too.”
Address 315 Columbia Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, +1 (718)395-3214, www.jalopytheatre.org | Getting there: Subway to Carroll Street (F, G) | Hours: See website for class and performance schedules | Tip: Quilters and knitters may want to check out nearby Brooklyn General Store (128 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231, www.brooklyngeneral.com). The shop carries a great collection of fabrics and hand-dyed wools and offers classes of all sorts.
Olly OxenFree Vintage is a sanctuary for fashion of bygone eras. The vintage store has been open since 2012 but feels like it has been setting trends for decades. The shop has a clear love for fashion and design from the 40s through 70s with coats, kimonos, cocktail dresses, vintage tees, and full-on costumes, all carefully curated and cataloged in visually stunning ways by Suzy, the store’s owner and founder.
It is easy to get lost among the beautiful fabrics and patterns that swaddle you when you first step inside the space from the bustling sidewalk. There is not a warmer and cozier place in Brooklyn. Suzy decks out every inch of her space to provide a little universe lost in time. She encourages patrons to try on one-of-a-kind pieces that she personally hand selects with care. You can’t help but want to touch and get to know each piece of clothing and learn their stories. Suzy is knowledgeable and is more than willing and able to help visitors find pieces for events, projects, or personal collections. This is the one-stop clothing oasis of your dreams.
Fundraisers and events are always percolating at Olly OxenFree. In the front you might find vintage tees that Suzy worked with artists to adorn with “No DAPL” (No Dakota Access Pipeline), with proceeds supporting the cause. The back of the store has held fundraisers and benefit concerts for Planned Parenthood and Standing Rock, among others. Along with political and social events, Olly OxenFree hosts classes, music events, and readings. Every Sunday the space in the back is opened up for a first-come, first-served yoga class taught by an accredited yoga teacher well versed in tantra and kundalini yoga, who teaches in the city at a top studio but comes once a week for a donation-based class. This store is a must-visit, as it combines the magic of your big sister’s closet and the historical interest of a museum.
Address: 137 Montrose Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11206, +1 (347)762-5048, www.ollyoxenfreevintage.com, oofvintage@gmail.com | Getting there: Subway to Montrose Avenue (L) | Hours: Mon, Wed, Thu 11am – 8pm, Fri – Sun 11am – 7pm | Tip: Antoinette (119 Grand Street, Brooklyn, NY 11249, www.antoinettebrooklyn.com) offers a balance of old and new on its racks. Roughly 70% of their clothing stock is vintage, while 30% is the work of Brooklyn-based designers.
The Slope Survey returns for its 8th installment with Daniella Stromberg, a native New Yorker, born and raised in the West Village and owner of d’mai Urban Spa on Fifth Avenue. Daniella opened the spa in 2004. Working with her team to provide a neighborhood sanctuary has been both a thrilling learning experience and a true honor as well.
What brought you to Park Slope?
I moved back to NYC in 1994. I had been living in Amsterdam and somehow returning to Manhattan just felt wrong. Park Slope was beautiful, progressive, had a great Park and seemed close to “the city” (as we called it then).
What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?
Before opening d’mai, friends and I celebrated my new lease by drinking champagne in the old fish market before construction. It was basically just all cement – a blank canvas filled with possibility.
Describe your community superpower.
Kindness.
If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what wuld it be?
I wish more of our restaurants stayed open later.
What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?
Things are always changing! It’s so hard to know what this next wave will look like…I imagine even more skyscrapers. To be honest, I find them jarring right now. In 10 years, I think the waterfront and canal restoration will bring the new and old together beautifully.
What are you reading, would you recommend it?
I’m actually re-reading “Me Talk Pretty One Day”, by David Sedaris. I love it just as much as the first 4 or 5 reads.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Full length cashmere bathrobe; I’ve had it for many years and it still looks and feel amazing.
If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?
Easy—the North Fork of Long Island!
Who is your hero, real or fictional?
I’m blown away by the student activists. They’ve given us hope that our nation really will get through this.
Last Word, What is turning you on these days?
The fact that winter is over and SPRING IS HERE.
In the late 1930’s and 1940’s in New York, the city used funding to do a project on housing and commercial properties. They sent employees out to take photos of almost every home or building. The result was an archive of over 700,000 photos. I suppose the city wanted a record of what things looked like in what seems now like a simpler time of drab black and white. Were there things they could change? Improve? Eliminate? The photos were forgotten; stored away in the city’s archives. Since this was a borough-wide project, and the vaults have been open to the public since the late 1980’s, anyone is now able to glimpse a Park Slope, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Boerum Hill, Carroll Gardens and Windsor Terrace frozen in time. These photos can be acquired from the city and bought for a small fee. These are visions of our Brooklyn that make us think of what remains. They are snapshots of longing.
The tin ceilings in our realm of Brooklyn turn the world a sepia tone. As we sip our cappuccinos’ in coffee shops that have kept their original architecture, perhaps we can hear a movie reel and recall that a quiet revolution was something that began in our neighborhoods with our own foreign voices. We remember this even though some of us weren’t even alive. So what is memory, really?
The vision of 1940’s Brooklyn does not evoke illusions of a yoga mat. Instead it brings to mind the cinched waists of young women in floral dresses, stoop ball, cigars, and baseball cards flapping in the spoke wheels of bicycles flying down Court Street. And although Yoga did exist in New York in the 1940’s, it was a hidden phenomenon. But how would our Brooklyn have looked if instead of biting our nails waiting for our boys to come home, we had sat on the floor without shoes or socks and said “Namaste”, the divine in me bows to the divine in you. What would those poses have taught us? What would our history books have looked like?
Buddha had an interesting take on love and memory. He said, “Love in the past – is only a memory. Love in the future – is only a fantasy. True love lives in the here and now.” Can this be right? Buddha’s words from 528 B.C. are a memory. They are just memory written down. Does that mean they are still alive? Does this mean Buddha is walking down Atlantic Avenue looking for a good vegan restaurant? Does it mean the 1940’s never died and if this is true then maybe the Brooklyn Dodgers are still playing baseball somewhere, maybe we never really went to war, maybe everything happens simultaneously and it depends on what scene we are taking place in at the moment. But no, that can’t be right. It isn’t right. Memory is the place that exists in our minds and if we can get a hold of our minds we can revisit memory anytime we want to.
Enter the yoga mat, the tin ceiling studio and the breath of not the past or the future, but of the here and now. Yoga requires one thing of us: to show up. We show up for many reasons. Most of the time we show up so that the nostalgia of our past Brooklyn’s won’t choke us. We show up so that we can relive those silent film memories while still letting them go. Shavasana is a good place for this kind of meditation. The end of every yoga class ends with Shavasana, also known as the “corpse position”. This title seems fitting for an idea of something like memory. After all, even our brief day-to-day moments are memories. Yet, what does lying on the ground still breathing teach us about recollecting our past? What can it enable us to do by learning from it?
My favorite thing to do during Shavasana is to visit the dead. And maybe lying on my back allows me a kind of closeness to the deceased that I may not encounter while standing up. Some yoga teachers, at the finality of their two-hour classes, offer a rare and valuable gem when they say, “during this resting pose you may choose to visit whoever you want or you may choose only to relax.” Who knows where some souls decide travel during the dreamlike wakefulness of Shavasana? What does Brooklyn begin to look like in these moments? Are the churches of Park Slope transformed slowly from red brick to a grey film? Do the old Italian bakeries in Carroll Gardens delicately fade into an illusory space on the avenue? What changes and what stays the same in the present moment?
In the 1940’s Yoga would have taught us patience, forgiveness and the art of letting go. Our history books would have stated as much. In some meditations the Brooklyn Dodgers are still playing baseball, the world never really went to war and yes the Buddha is walking down Atlantic Avenue, in search of fried chickpeas. Other visits to the yoga mat inform us that all of this is nonsense, nothing can be erased, and reality is reality. But then sometimes, as we close our eyes, perhaps the teacher passes by and puts her hands on our heads. Perhaps we are reminded of our grandparents, our parents, a child, a sister we lost, a brother we don’t speak to, or a stranger we once loved. The dead teach us to honor these memories, to hold them in our present hearts where we feel them. And it is in these moments when our realm of Brooklyn really does change. It transforms from a photograph to a live theatre production, from a silent film to a noisy one. The remnants of the past collide with the present. On our yoga mats we can see color, as if for the first time.
In a sea of new restaurants that rapidly open and close at a one-year-or-less pace, Park Slope’s Convivium Osteria has kept things going on 5th Avenue since 2000. Co-owner Carlo Pulixi notes, “This part of the neighborhood, I would say we were the very first. There were Spanish bodegas but nothing of what you see today. It was totally different.” The rustic, Southern Italian restaurant brings a little slice of Carlo’s Sardinia roots to Park Slope, a menu filled with fresh Mediterranean pasta and meat dishes. “It wasn’t really that I invented anything, more re-created. We brought it back to its origins,” Pulixi says. Co-owner and wife Michelle Pulixi met Carlo while working at Il Buco in the East Village, and the two decided that her Park Slope neighborhood would be the second home to showcase Carlo’s own home roots, along with Michelle’s Latin American family background. Today, you can still find many of the same menu items from when Convivium Osteria first opened nearly 20 years ago. We chatted with the owners about their experiences in the food industry and what they each love about Park Slope.
Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got involved in the food industry?
Michelle: I’ve been in the food restaurant industry since I was 12, where I worked on weekends at my best friend’s moms apple pie shop, sometimes at the counter, sometimes making pies. Since then I have always just been working my way up at different restaurants until I ended up in NYC and within 6 months of moving here I met Carlo at a restaurant I was working at and 1 year later we started looking for a place to open up together. 2 years later we had Convivium. I worked along side him all the way through, he is the main brain behind it all, and I am good a supporting and giving fresh ideas and adding artistic touches. We raised our kids in our apartment above the restaurant and it is really a family thing. Our son is just about ready to start working at Convivium in about 1 year, but they have always helped in setting up and doing little chores.
Carlo: Well I’m from Italy. Sardinia. I spend half of my teens to half of them in Roma before coming to the United States. And since I’ve been in the United States I’ve always worked in restaurants. And it’s not that hard for me, came kind of natural. With a number of partners, I opened a restaurant in the city before coming here to Brooklyn, which that’s the time that I met my wife Michelle. I don’t know, it just comes naturally to me, the restaurant business.
How did you help decide to move Convivium to Park Slope?
Carlo: When I met Michelle, she used to live here in Park Slope. I had never set foot in Brooklyn till then. Came to this neighborhood, got off at Grand Army Plaza, and fell in love with it. It was spring, the trees were green and all that. The neighborhood and the tree-lined streets, the sloping streets, the beautiful townhouses, and then, after almost 10 years in New York City, the kind of quietness. We lived very close to the park. It felt very great. We were planning on moving to Europe then really fell in love with it so we decided to open the restaurant here.
Michelle: We ended up in Park Slope because I lived here since 1998 and we both loved the neighborhood. Also, it had become impossible for little guys to open anything in Manhattan. Rents were reasonable back then in Park Slope, haha! We had very little money and had to squeeze everything in order to open up shop. Park Slope had a very cozy neighborhood feel, we felt at home here.
What do you think makes Convivium stand out from other restaurants in the neighborhood?
Michelle: What I think makes Convivium stand out is how when you enter the front door of our restaurant, you leave the hustle bustle of the city outside and, like a time portal, enter into a very rustic and cozy embracing atmosphere, at least I hope people do, that was our goal. A place where people can feel loved and appreciated, from the love we put into the food, to the setting and the service. Carlo is very keen to details and consistency at every level, from the wines he chooses to offer, to where he places a copper pot to shine just right, to quality and freshness of the produce and meat we offer, to the very rare and special wild fennel pollen that he chooses to spice a special pasta with. He was raised by farmers and chefs in Italy, so he has a lot of knowledge of the old world to bring to us.
A RABBI’S SEARCH FOR BALANCE
In 2015, Timoner relocated her family from Los Angeles, where she served as associate rabbi of Leo Baeck Temple, to take a position as senior rabbi at Congregation Beth Elohim, a Reform Jewish congregation that traces its roots to the late 19th century and, since 1910, has gathered on the corner of Garfield Place and Eighth Avenue. In her brief time in Brooklyn, the long-time progressive activist and grassroots organizer has become a central force in not only the spiritual but political life of Park Slope, making headlines for her arrest protesting President Trump’s travel ban in February of 2017 and kindling the resistance movement #GetOrganizedBrooklyn with councilmember Brad Lander, among many other actions both within the congregation and in the wider community.
As we sat in her cozy, book-filled office tucked behind CBE’s sanctuary, the rabbi engaged with off the cuff eloquence about relocating from the west coast, following the teachings of the Torah, and what to do about millennials. A theme of our conversation was the complexity of the human experience, and how challenging it can be to not only live with but try to embrace contradiction.
Perhaps we can look to Timoner as a model for such duality. She is commanding yet compassionate, emotional and intellectual. She is endlessly active, yet — this struck me most of all — she listens, carefully, thoughtfully. When you speak with Rabbi Timoner, you feel heard. Understood. Though this writer’s spiritual search continues, I left my conversation with the rabbi — as I did last time we spoke about her work — emboldened by another dialectic: spurred on to action and anchored by the great wisdom that exists in our own backyard.
What makes your congregation such a unique and special place, one that would draw you to Park Slope all the way from California?
There’s a question right now in the Jewish world about what the future of the synagogue is going to look like. A lot of a lot of young Jews think about the synagogue as something that their parents or their grandparents were part of, and there’s a question of like, can and will the synagogue reinvent itself? And how? This congregation has been engaged in that for some time and really is open to experimentation. To engaging the larger neighborhood, not just the Jewish community. To being right there and relevant on whatever the pressing questions are at the time. And that’s the kind of congregation that I most wanted to serve. One where we could be talking about what’s most important in our society and in our lives. And one where we are having a really open boundary, like just really open to the rest of the community and looking actively for partnerships across lines of race, across lines of faith. And also one that is willing to be bold, and willing to try new things and willing even to fail in the pursuit of the kind of change that meets people where they are.
It seems that a huge part of your life is defined by your commitment to social justice. Do you ever feel that there’s tension between that role and your role as a rabbi? Or does anyone from the congregation ever give you the idea that there might be tension there?
In any congregation this big, we have like 900-something households, there’s diversity there. And there are a lot of people who really prize the role that we’re playing around social justice. It’s one of their primary points of connection. And there are other people who don’t want to see that here. Who feel like a synagogue should be mostly a place that feels calm and peaceful, where we don’t really talk about political questions. Where we don’t talk about things that are upsetting. There are people who feel that way. Or who feel like the direction our country is going in is OK, there are those. It’s a very small minority of people here, but there are some people who feel that way. So, the way that I feel about that is when I am aware of somebody being uncomfortable with the direction we’re taking, I really want them to know that I want to hear from them and I want to sit with them. I want to hear what’s been uncomfortable and want to hear, you know, I want to hear their perspective. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that I’m not going to do what I’m doing or that I’m not going to lead the way I’m leading because I do feel like this moment requires that of us. I actually feel, beyond this moment, I feel that Torah and Judaism requires of us that we take a stand on the moral questions of our time. And then we take the political questions. Torah is actually a political text. It’s about society. It’s about how to create a just society. That’s what Torah is. So in my eyes, if I were to be silent or inactive on the injustices of our time, I would be betraying Torah. In order to fulfill Torah and be true to it, I have to speak. I don’t have a choice.
As a society, we want to move beyond this idea of, “as a Democrat, I could never be friends with a Republican” and vice versa, but it sometimes feels like we’re creating divisions that are insurmountable. But we have to be able to reach across and have a dialogue…
Because we have more in common than we realize. One of the things that we’ve been doing this year, actually for the last two years, is creating a dialogue series here specifically hoping that people will come who don’t agree with each other. This year our focus is Israel. Within the Jewish community, there’s a really big range of feelings about Israel, and within this congregation there are. So we have a 12-part series we’ve been doing this year in which each time we meet, one of the hours is study, where we actually learn some history about Israel and Palestine and Jewish history and get grounded in some knowledge. And then the other hour is dialogues. So we have trained a group of congregants to be facilitators, and we have small groups and people come together and really are encouraged to open up and talk about how they feel and what they think and to disagree with each other. And to grow our capacity to be uncomfortable, to grow our capacity to listen to views we don’t agree with, to take a deep breath, to stay open, to stay curious, to see if there’s something we might learn. None of us has the answers. To develop a humility that, I need you and you need me and we need each other to be able to create a society together. And so I think that what that requires is two parts of the whole. One part is being able to speak and act with clarity on the things we are clear about. You were asking about social justice. So there’s a lot of things that are very clear from Torah about what should happen in a just society. When we see injustice, we must speak about it, we need to protest it, we need to stand for what’s right. Meanwhile, we also have to have the ability to listen to people who don’t agree and to be humble in that conversation and to be open and to be curious and to expect that we might have something we don’t know. And that’s a very challenging combination. Two different modes of being. But I’m trying to make both those modes of being happen here, both myself and my own leadership and for the congregation to have opportunities to do both things at the same time.
It wasn’t that long ago that you joined the rabbinate, receiving s’micha from Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in 2009. Since then, how have you grown in your spirituality? In your idea of what it means to be a rabbi?
I feel like my growing edge, the part that I’m always learning about is the relationship between spirituality and social justice, between having an active relationship with God, the source of life. Having an active relationship with the aspects of being alive that are more subtle and internal and with the part of my leadership that has to do with crying out for the role that should be. And those in some ways really obviously dovetail with one another and other ways can sometimes feel far apart from each other. Sometimes the work we do, when we are advocating for policies or doing community organizing or protesting things, can feel really secular. Really, really secular. I think that the integration of those two things, always remembering where the motivation comes from. I don’t just care about this as an American. I care about this as a Jew. I care about this as a rabbi. Where does that come from? It comes from Torah. Where in Torah does it come from? And where does Torah come from? Where does that feeling in us that pulls us to say, wait, I believe in us as, as human beings, I believe that we can do better than this. I must speak about this thing that’s wrong. Where does that pull come from deep within us? My feeling is that that comes from something beyond us. It’s also in us, and so just always connecting those two pieces. I feel like it’s possible to be praying and not thinking about the world or be in the world and not be thinking about God, and I’m always wanting to reconnect those two things to each other and integrate them. That is, for me, it has always been a very present challenge for me, and it continues to be.
You also aren’t afraid to put yourself on the front lines of social justice. I know you’ve engaged in civil disobedience and written and spoken about that work. I was struck by something in a piece you wrote about the Muslim ban. You said that civil disobedience is what privilege should be used for. Could you take me back to that moment and elaborate on that sentiment?
There were a group of rabbis, 19 of us, who blocked the road by Trump Tower in Manhattan, the Trump hotel on Central Park West and Columbus Circle. I was aware that night about how safe I felt, sitting in the dark in the middle of the road. I knew that the cars weren’t going to hit me because there were police there blocking them. I knew that the police weren’t going to beat me up. I knew that I wasn’t going to get locked up for days with no one coming to help me. I knew that if there was bail I could pay it. I knew that I wasn’t going to get put in Rikers Island. Given that I was doing something risky, I felt remarkably safe. And that is because of a lot of things. I have white skin. I have lots of contacts, lawyers who could help me. We organized this in a way where we made sure that we had what we needed to be safe. I think one of the interesting dynamics as white people become more and more aware of our privilege and more and more aware of systemic racism is to think about what to do with it. Because it’s not useful to sit around feeling guilty that you’ve gotten a leg up on everyone, all people of color around you, that you’ve gotten advantages that other people haven’t gotten. It doesn’t do anything to feel guilty about that. So, ok, instead, I’ve got this privilege, I’ve benefited from this privilege. I would like to dismantle this system, but in the meantime, what do I do with this privilege and the power that it gives me? If I can put my body on the line in a visible way that gets media attention for people who might be behind bars or might be in detention, or might be at risk of deportation or are being barred from this country because of their religion, et cetera. If I can do that, that is a great way to use my privilege. Whereas if I didn’t have these privileges, taking that risk is something that I still might do, but it would be much riskier. And so I do feel like for those who have privilege, I think one of the questions we ought to ask ourselves is: what is this privilege good for? What can I use it for, given that I have it, and how do I use it with tremendous humility? How do I make sure that I am acting in a way that supports the leadership of people who are targeted and oppressed that never brings attention to myself at their cost or expense, but that is strategic and makes that privilege useful.
Given all that you do and these different roles you play, how do you not only find time for yourself, but also for your family?
I think that people who aren’t involved in synagogues or churches often don’t have any idea how clergy schedules are.
And I imagine in many cases, people need you, they don’t just want to chat.
Yeah. So my schedule, like I tend to be completely booked, you know, 10 to 12 hours a day without a break. I’m booked six weeks out, for six weeks solid. And then if you go six weeks ahead, you can find that opening. I right now have kind of found my groove. When I started in this job, it was overwhelming to me. When I started in my last job, it was overwhelming to me, but in time you kind of get to know the rhythm, the game of Tetris that is the calendar [laughs]. And in terms of time with my family, I don’t have enough time with my family. I don’t. I just was away with them this weekend and really, really soaked up that time and enjoyed it. But in general, I don’t have as much time with my family as I would like. We make sure to have Shabbat dinner together every Friday night and make sure to have, you know, little snippets here and there late at night and sometimes on the weekends. But it’s part of what I agreed to when I decided to be a rabbi. I took that on, and I hope, I think that my children and my family are getting what they need. But yeah, it’s definitely a lot to balance. In terms of not going crazy or not getting too exhausted, I do keep my eye on that. Like I definitely work hard to find ways that I’m going to get enough rest, have some time when I’m not here, have some time when I have some days off. Because I would love to be doing this work for a really long time.
To make it sustainable. Well, to come full circle, there are various reports that say millennials are less inclined to believe in organized religion. What you make of that? Do you notice that in your own congregation?
Well, one thing that’s incredible here at CBE is that we have this thing called Brooklyn Jews, which is for millennials, and it is thriving. There are hundreds, hundreds, hundreds of people in their twenties and thirties who are coming to things and who are connected to each other and making community. I think the issue is, if it looks like the older generation’s thing, like, who wants to be part of that? If it looks like it’s willing to adapt to meet you where you are, then it starts to become intriguing. Brooklyn Jews has Shabbat services, it has Shabbat dinners, it has holiday parties. It has all kinds of different things out and about in Brooklyn and at CBE. Increasingly we are combining things, with Brooklyn Jews and the general congregation doing things together. And it turns out that a lot of the
people in their twenties and thirties, they really want to be an intergenerational environment, as long as it’s not just that they’re supposed to fit into what the older generation wants. It should be about them also. And we’re ready to do that. And we do that. And it’s really incredible. I would say that the polling data about millennials, I am not seeing that. I think that it’s overstated.
I’m someone who is still figuring out my own path, but we all need community. There also are statistics that people are lonelier than ever and more addicted to substances than ever.
Yes. Yes, I think that millennials are very much looking for community.
And in real time.
Yes, with other people, laughing, talking, eating, singing, being together. You know, I think millennials very much are spiritual. They might not think of themselves as religious, but they’re spiritual. They’re curious about, they’re wanting to engage with questions of meaning and questions of life purpose. I think I’ve talked to a lot of people who feel that they kind of are connected to something larger than themselves, and it’s mysterious, and they don’t know what that is, but they want to be able to pursue that and explore it. And so I don’t think really fundamentally millennials are different than everybody else.
We just have a lot more confusing content to sort through.
Yeah. And our world is… looking at our world right now could lead one to despair. And I think coming of age in this time is harrowing. So having other people to do that with, having people to do that with who will also be willing to talk and think about what makes you hopeful and what we could do together and where we could come together and are willing to laugh. I think everybody needs that.
The light that shines through the translucent plastic is viciously sensual. The sun permeates the material and projects a candy colored pink shadow onto the wooden floor, met with varying shades of effervescent lime, intrepid orange, and delicate violet. The radiant shadows dance with one another, shifting in hue and intensity as the outside light moves from dawn to dusk.
A ten foot by four foot patchwork of pellucid materials sewn together hangs from the bay window of a brownstone in Park Slope, Brooklyn. This is the work of Marc Lafia, an artist that has made his studio the bottom floor of his family home.
It is a quiet Thursday afternoon and the studio is vacant: not of the art, but of the artist. It is rare to experience the space without the emanating presence of Marc, who spends most days working, writing, and creating art in the various rooms of his atelier. As he innovates, he unearths himself.
Marc’s art practice is iterative and perpetually blossoming. He’s like a conductor of a massive orchestra that he is constantly recasting, refining, and expanding. His musicians take the form of any and every material that one could imagine: sheets of silicon, latex, silk, diaphanous plastic, giant gauze, organza, metallic mylar, wooden cubes, cardboard, sheer cloth, tissue paper, textiles, zippers, pliable string, potato sacks, felt, zip lock bags, and more. The list is infinite. Marc decides how these materials will come together to form works of art, sometimes in duets, sometimes in quartets, and most often in symphonies.
A few days each week, Marc roams the aisles of Canal Plastics and Mood Fabrics, two of his go-to stores in Lower Manhattan. He can spend hours observing the highly industrialized and refined products that line the shelves of these emporiums, touching every piece of neoprene or acrylic he comes across. He examines the materials by feeling them, touching them, scrutinizing their various sizes, weights, shapes, and textures. Sometimes he knows what he is looking for, but often what he brings home is different from what he set out to buy.
Perhaps that is an apt parallel for Marc’s style as an artist. That is not to say that his work is random: not at all. It is deliberately eclectic. He knows, but he doesn’t know. He is perceptive and reflective, thinking deeply about his ideas, claims, and desires, but he often translates these preconceptions into tangible realities via of-the-moment discoveries. His work ethic is deeply in touch with the present, with his surroundings and his environment, with the materials he has at hand, with the weather of the day, with the light of the hour.
Marc’s ever expanding toolkit of raw materials are more than just a response to his artistic visions. In fact, for him, that link is actually reversed: it is the materials themselves that garner his vision. His work certainly requires cavernous rumination, but not without the help of a physical substrate laying before his eyes to help propel his thinking forward. He will admit, and proudly so, that his materials often dictate his ideas.
______
The next morning, a brisk December Friday, he embarks on his daily routine of waking up with the sun and walking downstairs to retrieve hot coffee with steamed milk in a mossy green mug. He then returns to his bedroom, sinks into his mattress as he leans against the blue-gray colored wall, and opens the “Notes” application on his computer. Here he keeps hundreds of documents of essays, moodboards, and nuggets of thought about his current body of work, which has yet to have a definite title. It oscillates between “In What Language to Come,” “Forms, Appearances, and Representations,” and “Experience of the Pleasant, of Reward, and of the Beautiful.”
He spends the next few hours writing away, perhaps energized by his eccentric dream from the previous night. Marc is an avid and vivid dreamer, each night bringing a new discovery, terror, realization, or experience for him. He likes to stress that he dreams in intense color. In his last slumber, his escapade began by him walking down a hill of lusciously green grass. He says he came across a deep, dark, bottomless, aquamarine, reflective blue lake. A crisp white convertible car was dripping water in slow motion as it was pulled up by a bright orange crane. A massive crowd of people gathered to watch, and they were all wearing glossy yellow raincoats.
Though he tries not to take the content of his dreams too seriously, it is the arresting colors that stick with him throughout the day. Around 10am, he dresses in one of three typical outfits: an all white ensemble, a blue pinstripe button down shirt coupled with black trousers, or a fabulously patterned shirt paired with hazelnut colored corduroys. The constants of each day’s attire include a bedazzled black belt and a dainty neck scarf. He also always wears two beaded bracelets, one blue and one black, that were made and gifted to him in Japan two summers ago by the mother of a good friend of his, a fellow artist herself. The mother passed away a few months following Marc’s visit to her home in Tokyo, and he has worn the bracelets daily ever since.
Marc descends the two flights of stairs from his bedroom to the bottom floor, stopping briefly in the kitchen for a handful of salted nuts. He slips on his caramel brown Turkish slippers–that are so worn they need orange duct-tape to keep them from falling apart–as he crosses the threshold of his studio. The room is freezing–he calls it his “winter palace”–but he is immune to this arctic cold since he spends nearly every day in it. Sometimes he lights a fire in the backroom fireplace, which adds to the natural, earthy feeling of his space. Still, his resistance to the cold isn’t strong enough to stop him from putting on a thin black jacket for imperative warmth.
The particular brownstone inside which he has built his studio is a unique space because it is a corner house, and thus has sixteen windows on the parlor floor alone. “To me it’s like an amazing, massive camera,” Marc describes. “You’re getting almost four sides of light.”
His sensitivity to light is deeply ingrained within him, likely formed by his background in photography and film. Although his career path shifted to fine art fifteen years ago, his time in film school and utter love of photography have been integral in forming how he experiences the world, and in turn how he experiences and thus creates art. Marc’s mind is always thinking of different “shots,” constantly constructing a story and a documenting a narrative as he goes about his day, just as he was trained to do as a filmmaker. He does not passively standby and watch reality unfold, but rather actively experiences thing with an eye trained to preserve content that might be perfect material for a later project. In this vein, Marc is the epitome of a metacognitive person and thinker: in fact, one could say that he is a metacognitive connoisseur. He is always stepping back to think about how he is thinking, how he is doing what he is doing, how he is responding to the things that he feeling. His cinematic mind has become intrinsic, morphing into a philosophical locomotive that critically thinks and makes in tandem.
Marc’s current work is perhaps the culmination of years and years of retaliation against photography as it is most typically known. As someone who lived through the transition from the analog to the digital, he has become acutely attune to form. He is obsessed with the how of things, anything, more so than the what or the why. He grew up with the restriction of 35 shots on a roll of film that would take days to get developed, and fifty years later he has an iPhone with 64 gigabytes of storage that allows him to take thousands upon thousands of pictures that he can view instantly. Having witnessed such a rapid transition and expansion of the capabilities of a camera, Marc is fascinated by what a picture was, what a picture is, and what a picture can be. Evidence of this interest is clear in the titles of his last and current books: “Image Photograph,” and “The Event of Art,” respectively.
“One of the things that interested me when I was doing a lot of photography was the physical act of printing the photographs,” Marc recollects. He goes onto describe how he’d go to galleries and play close attention to the frame that a photograph was placed in, the size of the image, the paper it was printed on, and so on. This led him to the profound realization that a photograph is also an object, a claim that he has since been working on for years on end.
“I wanted to make an image with a new kind of substrate,” he declares. That desire transpired a few years ago when Marc began to print photographs onto paper lampshades from Ikea. He found interesting ties between this new work and the traditional medium of photography when he happily remembered that all negatives are plastic–analog film is plastic, so the physical existence of a “photograph” is enabled by a palpable material.
That was the beginning of a very organic progression of zealous work for Marc, all budding and building and growing from an underlying desire to discover and create a new form of photography. He started venturing to fabric stores, on a mission to discover the possibilities that materials of all kinds would lead him to.
He started with sewing the Ikea lamp shades to a piece of colored plastic, and hung it up in his studio as a kind of experiment. He waited for the afternoon light to hit, and all of a sudden the newly made sculpture began to glow. This was his first iteration of a new kind of material “photograph.”
It’s no wonder that Marc has been making work that encompasses light, because the way that the sun gushes and blushes and bursts through the windows of his studio would fill anyone with exuberance. The late afternoon light in particular, which hits the front, western side of the room, is sure to galvanize a visceral reaction. Each hour of the day fills his studio with a different sensitivity of ambient light
Marc walks up to the pink, sheer cloth that hangs from a clothesline-like structure in the center of the room, examining it by way of touching it. He picks up a larger piece of fabric, composed of several smaller pieces sewn together, and fastens it to an opening further down the clothesline.
It is a day in which the sun’s desire to shine is constantly wavering. One moment the sky is overcast, and the next the sun is beaming. It is during the latter that the art in the room is at its peak. A leisurely, observant meander throughout the studio reveals a myriad of shadows in every nook and cranny. Fabric pieces are hung all around the room, creating projections of light that are variable, fluctuating, mercurial, volatile, fluid, shifting.
After his first fabric experiment, he coined the term “light-sculpture,” and began making a multitude of them. “These fabrics are light sculptures in the sense that they are light sensitive, made with various kinds of plastic and polyesters,” he explains. “Each material has a different kind of opacity, transparency, and color that emits light; that lets light moves forward; that lets shards of sun ripple through.” With each new piece, he continues to explore his fascination with what happens when light is enclosed, enraptured, and held within itself. “It’s kind of like an adventure that gets very obsessive. You just keep going with it, you follow it, and it takes you where it wants to go. That’s the whole point, and that’s what I love about it.”
His studio is now full of light sculptures of all shapes and sizes and colors, all of which refract and transpose light in different ways. The way that the fabrics fold and mold into each other feels organic and animate, as if the sculptures themselves are living and breathing just like we are. “They are very alive.”
His work reminds the viewer of something, but they are not sure exactly what it is. “It’s very oblique in a way.” The viewer wants to touch them, or at least imagine what the various materials feel like. “I want to step back from depiction, representation, and imitation, and present things as phenomena itself. From there, I can open up a space to give view to materiality and form as an object itself.”
Marc’s work fluid, ephemeral, and ever changing. He says that he’s been trying to make something that changes as you move about it, something that sees you more than you see it. He wants to evoke a relationship between “the perceiver, and the embodied perception.” At the same time, his new work is very much about fragility, a kind of “frozen calamity physics,” as he describes. To him, it’s all about the things that are about to fall apart, and yet precariously stay together. He adamantly disagrees with the common perception that art is permanent, that it defeats time and can exist forever. For Marc, art is an experience of the moment. He is inspired by painter Marcelle Duchamp and musician John Cage, who were both interested in the idea of variability and chance. One of Marc’s essential mantras is from a Mallarmé poem: “a throw of the dice does not abolish chance.” He says that he still doesn’t quite understand what the phrase means, but he loves it nonetheless. Marc seems to be increasingly interested in dichotomies: how we as people are both so strong and so frail. He tries to echo this paradox in his work.
________
Evening comes, and Marc sits on his red reef couch in the back room of the studio reading an article called “Art and Its Surrogates.” Morrissey, his favorite musician, is blasting on speakers. He listens to “Mountjoy” over and over and over again, singing along to the lyric, “The joy brings many things, but it cannot bring you joy.”
He looks up towards his sculptures, which hang about the space without the presence of light. They are resting, sleeping, unwinding. Getting ready for tomorrow, for another day of luminescent variability.
“You can make art with your family, in your house, on an airplane, at the beach. You can make art, do art, be art, act art. You ARE art. Art has a fullness and a robustness that is everbecoming. It’s really fun.”
His orchestra tunes its instruments, and their conductor falls into a colorful dream.
The Slope Survey returns for its 7th installment with Olivia Williamson, owner of Olivia Cooks For You, Personal Chef and Catering Services as well as Olivia’s Kitchen, a regular column in the Park Slope Reader.
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What brought you to Park Slope?
No surprises here. We were starting to think about a starting a family and the 6th floor tenement studio in the East Village felt like not a great spot for it. Plus, after almost 25 years, I was wearing a little thin on the Manhattan pace and was excited to move to a more leafy and slower paced place.
What is your most memorable Park Slope moment?
I don’t have just one, but I will say the group of friends and support I found after the birth of my first child I will never forget.
Describe your community superpower.
I keep a close eye on new openings, restaurants and events so I’m great at making recommendations on these type of things.
If you could change one thing about the neighborhood, what would it be?
I wish the commercial rents would come down so that more people have the opportunity to open small businesses.
What do you think Park Slope will look like in 10 years?
I think it will be pretty much the same. It’s so well established now as the wonderful place for families that it is, and so close to the best park ever, I can’t see it changing too much.
What are you reading, would you recommend it?
Ugh. I haven’t read that much since the arrival of our very high energy 6 year old, but I did recently read Lincoln in the Bardo and loved it.
What is your greatest extravagance?
Hah! Restaurants, of course!
If you couldn’t live in Park Slope or in Brooklyn, where would you go?
New Orleans. I love the architecture and the energy.
Who is your hero, real or fictional?
Right now, it Jose Andres. The work he is doing in Puerto Rico is nothing short of amazing.
Last Word, What’s is turning you on these days?
I’m going through a bit of a growing period with my business, which is exciting.
What is it about the cold months in Park Slope that make Brooklyn stand out like a Charles Dickens village? With all the chaos and commotion of our city, our world and our speck in the universe, it is Brooklyn that remains unchanged. Even with new renovations, new neighbors, new schools, hospitals and restaurants, the true heart of winter lives and thrives on the streets of Brooklyn. Some of this has to do with the deep roots of our borough, the history of Park Slope and it’s surrounding neighborhoods. But, some of it also has to do with Yoga.
Yoga has become a phenomenon in western culture. Brooklyn is no exception. This is nothing new. As human beings our attachment to the affects of yoga are great. Also, let’s face it; aside from the benefits we enjoy the community. It is in a yoga class where people find they can be alone. It is also in a yoga class that most people find they are not at all alone. So how great is our suffering during this season? How much time have we spent on our own hearts between the cool rush of holiday shopping and New Year’s promises? Winter in Brooklyn gives us the opportunity to deepen our practice in an open and more vulnerable way.
[pullquote]The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. [/pullquote]The true heart of winter resides somewhere between Windsor Terrace and Prospect Heights. I mean to say that if one walks through all of the neighborhoods that relate to these two places, there will be an abundance of coffee shops, a plethora of bars and a vast array of yoga studios. In the coffee shop laptops and frothy cappuccinos prepare us for our daily grinds by serving the daily grind. The bar allows us to unwind from the stressful perimeters of our work, family and home life. But it is inside the yoga studio where we may enter, remove our shoes and respect where we are in the moment. We do not try to escape the cold. Instead, we seek refuge and our own bodies feed us the warmth of our tired souls.
There are four noble truths that can be incorporated into these long months of winter; four noble truths seem to follow us on our paths to the heart. These truths ignite the cold months with a fiery reality. What we might find at the coffee shop, the bar or the yoga studio throughout the year is dukkha. Dukkha is the first noble truth in Buddhism and it roughly translates to “life is suffering”. I know, it sounds depressing right? Although this sounds awful it actually should have the opposite affect. It is a teaching that enriches the idea of impermanence. Our happiest moments can be considered dukkha because they too will end, and so we can say that our saddest moments are also dukkha. They will not last. Dukkha is significant in winter because the cold season too will end. Flowers will bloom again and so we can carry the first noble truth in our mind’s eye as a compass and as a means of letting go.
The second noble truth is tanha. Some translate this word as “craving”. This has to do with our human attachment to the things we desire, or just desire in general. Our need to attach ourselves to material objects, ideas and people create chaos within our hearts and minds. This truth has been realized on yoga mats all over the world. In Brooklyn throughout the cold months and the buying frenzies tahna sticks its tongue out at us and dares us to enjoy our lives as they are. Tahna asks us not to try and change anything but to see everything with a third eye as if we are hovering over ourselves without judgment but with a greater awakening of the spirit. It asks us not to hold on.
Nirhodha is the third noble truth and it is also an instruction on the end of suffering. It sounds so simple: just let go, stop craving things, stop attaching to things. But, I really want my cappuccino! This truth arrives at a slow pace. Through our yoga practice and meditation it comes. The need to grasp dissipates. We may awaken. We may stay asleep. But we practice. This is our path, which then leads us into the final and fourth noble truth.
The fourth truth, magga is our path. It is often referred to as the eightfold path because it is comprised of different areas and aspects of our lives and instructs us on how to walk our own path. In a nutshell it is a mindful way of living. The first three noble truths cannot exist or be realized without this one. The magga is like a sacred duty we have to ourselves and to the world around us.
The heart of winter in Brooklyn can be brutal. Or maybe I’ve just attached myself to that idea. But where there is a lull in the season, there is an opportunity to awaken on the yoga mat. The four noble truths can guide us through a cold season and bring to light our own noble hearts. After all, winter is not about gifts or holidays or even resolution. Winter is about a solace we can find when we are quiet enough. When we walk past the coffee shop, skip the bar and take off our socks at the yoga studio in order to look at our own feet, the ugliness, the beauty, the impermanence and the silent possibility of our own wonder.
Art by Heather Heckel
Once I was allowed to work at a Yoga Studio in Brooklyn. I say, “allowed” because at the time I was a mess (and that’s putting it lightly). I was trying to stop drinking, trying to stop being sad, trying to stop being in love with every tattooed beauty I met in Prospect Park, trying. I was trying to stop trying.
A generous studio owner in Windsor Terrace gave me the opportunity to run the front desk at her Yoga studio a few days a week in exchange for free classes. I could check everyone into the class and then at the last minute (if I wanted to) I could lock the front door and slip my mat through the back curtain and take the class.
[pullquote]I remember that after that class I swept the studio with a clear mind. I put my awareness into everything I did. I noticed the pail, the tea tree oil, the mop, the floor, the ants gathered by the windowsill outside. I noticed myself in the vast world. [/pullquote]“There’s just one thing,” she said before she tossed me the keys on my first day. “You have to sweep the studio after every class. Sweep and then wet and dry mop. I’ll show you.” She opened a closet close to the desk and pulled out a broom with a wicker bottom, and a pail with a bottle labeled “tea tree oil concoction”. Born and raised in Brooklyn my parents used Pine Sol and Clorox on everything. This was new and environmentally savvy. It smelled like upstate New York and made me forget for a minute who I was and more than who I was it made me forget who I wasn’t and who I was trying to be.
My boss had me follow her through the studio first sweeping from the corners inwards. Then after we pushed the dirt into the mini dustpan we filled the bucket with this Upstate New York smelling substance and began the mopping, then the dry mopping. “You must mop the same way you sweep and do it mindfully. Every time you clean the studio bring your focus and energy into what you’re doing, just like in yoga.”
I felt like a female Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid. I disliked doing anything the same way. Looking back, perhaps that’s what my life lacked most at the time: structure. I wanted to do things the same way I just didn’t know how. My body and mind pushed everything away in those days. I pushed so hard against emotions that I couldn’t feel anything and so sweeping the studio, in the same way, every day, sometimes three times a day, was a relief and a hindrance all at once.
The first week of sweeping the studio different pictures from my life passed through my mind. They weren’t all bad pictures but I was trying to focus! Of course there were also the yoga classes. I would sweep, check the next class in and then slip my mat through the back curtain and feel that I couldn’t do any of the poses. I couldn’t even touch my toes! I fell back into Child’s Pose more times than I could count and then I couldn’t wait for Shavasana, even though that scared me too because though relaxing it would mean having to go deep inside of myself to find peace.
So there I was, working at a yoga studio feeling like the worst student of yoga, pushing my feelings away, doing everything wrong…or so it seemed. But, it’s funny with the Eastern arts. Sometimes, faking it is the one true path to heart. Going through the motions somehow helped me to get somewhere, which wasn’t anywhere really, but it was here.
Let me explain. One day my boss asked if I could do the desk on a Sunday night. Trying to stay away from the bars and the boys I thought this would be all right. But, the Sunday night class was a restorative class and I had only been taking morning classes that generally were early flow and tune up classes. A restorative class is slower and it is supposed to be more relaxing. I’m a brassy Brooklynite with a “go, go, go” personality and so as I found out that night the restorative classes are more challenging for me. Also, I had been taking yoga and sweeping the studio for almost six months and I still felt like I couldn’t do anything. I still couldn’t touch my toes, I definitely couldn’t stand on my head and I smelled like a pine forest.
Sunday night arrived and with it a smaller class. The morning classes filled up but Sunday night was for the wicked, or just for the people who didn’t have to work on Monday morning. I checked the class in and then slipped through the back curtain. It was warm outside and the windows of the studio were open. There was a calm feeling in the air and we began. Halfway through the session I felt strange. I was completely present for the first time at the studio. Something about the slow drift of the class made me take notice of every movement and every thought. And with these movements my thoughts slipped away. I think this is what Zen Buddhists call “no mind”. And then all at once the teacher had us go into “easy pigeon” but using a bolster to lie on.
Easy pigeon is known to open up the hips. But, more than that the hips hold anger and tension which at the time I didn’t know. Using all of my awareness I deepened the pose. I breathed. I stretched. I stopped. For the first time in my life, I stopped trying. And then a flood of tears came. I didn’t know where they came from, or why and it didn’t matter. It was my body colliding with my mind. It was the relief of release. It was a slow croon, a long note, a letting go.
I remember that after that class I swept the studio with a clear mind. I put my awareness into everything I did. I noticed the pail, the tea tree oil, the mop, the floor, the ants gathered by the windowsill outside. I noticed myself in the vast world. The next week I touched my toes. A month later I did my first headstand. Today I sweep my own home with that same awareness. I mop with the same tea tree oil concoction. Only today I don’t push myself away. How can I? I’m right here. I’ve been here all along.
