New York, NY

I am on my way home (via Amtak/Acelaaaahh) from a 24 hour trip to Manhattan. Train travel manages to be both thrilling and civilized. I've read a book and a half.

I love New York. Especially in the spring -- warm but not smelly.  Especially Central Park. Especially when someone else is picking up the tab and I'm wandering around, looking into store windows and museums, and at the urban parade. So many tourists. So many children in school uniforms. Ice cream and hot dog vendors.Bakeries flaunting sexy bread and cookies on every other corner. The light pouring through the avenue canyons. Crocuses everywhere.

I was in movie-land Manhattan; the upper east side, which I hardly know, where on Friday night at 6 pm there was virtually no traffic (at 90th and Lex, at least.) The trip to Penn Station wasn't quite as mellow, but I dig the madness, too. Cabs are back to honking in NYC. I thought they got fined for that.

New York makes me want to make  lists that would put Walt Whitman (who loved New York) to shame.

Walking to the hotel this morning, a guy in a rush (I guess) came up behind me and stepped on the heel of my shoe, pulling it right off me. He apologized and hurried off. A woman came over and clucked over his rudeness and hurry. Are you okay?

She was from St. Vincent in the Carribean and we chatted about the end of winter as we proceeded up the avenue. She's been in  NY for 18 years but says she'll go back in three more. Go to college. Start a business. Here you work to pay your bills, she said.

We bid each other goodbye at 89th street.

Best seller

My latest novel Day After Night has not been best-seller. Let me be clear that the book is, thanks to word of mouth, selling and selling. But it's not a block-buster that's shown up on THE LISTS. At least, not in the USA.

But I've had word that the book is at the top of the Israeli fiction best-seller chart. Woo and hoo!

Day After Night is set in 1945 Palestine immediately following the end of World War II. The main characters are immigrants from the European Holocaust who begin to put their lives together in a strange new land.

During my research, I tried to keep from worrying too much about how the novel might be greeted by the Israeli public: after all, I'm an American presuming to write about their local history. But I kept my head down, did the most thorough research I could (using translations and translators)and hoped that the story and the story-telling would carry the day.

So the success of the book in Israel brings relief and gratitude and, yes, pride.

Anniversary

February 11 is the 20th anniversary of Nelson Mandela's release from prison after 27 years on Robbin Island. In the Sunday New York Times, political prisoners from around the world reflected on how that day affected their hopes and dreams for the future. Their words made me recall my experience of that day.

Home in my bathrobe, with my four-year-old daughter, I switched the channel from Sesame Street to watch history unfold. I remember telling Emilia about why we weren't watching Elmo and Big Bird. I doubt she understood a word, but I was riveted and I remember her being patient about the change in her routine.

A few years ago I visited Cape Town, where I took the tour of Robbin Island and saw the prison where Mandela was held, the mine where he was forced to work, the view of the city and Table Mountain -- maddeningly close.

Everywhere we went in South Africa, the affection and esteem for Mandela was palpable. He was and is a major part of the glue that holds South Africa together as it copes with the nuclear fallout of apartheid.

Mandela inspires for his courage and determination, his political skills as president, and his temperament. As he walked out prison, 20 years ago, his smile lit up the world. And it always will.

Tough start

The images from Haiti are awful and haunting. I made my first contribution yesterday, and resolve to make a monthly gift for the rest of 2010. Once Anderson Cooper packs up his t-shirts and returns to the US, we're all going to start forgetting and get distracted by other calamities --and celebrations. Life is relentless that way.

Closer to home, I've already been to one funeral since the new calendar went up. I will, alas, be attending another funeral in the coming week. Terrible, untimely losses both.

I send cards and visit. I do my best to stay in touch as time goes by. And then my life takes over -- the petty nonsense and the genuine pleasures.

Life is relentless. It wrings us out and leaves us behind and it's tough to find the blessing in the collapsed schoolroom, the mother mourning her beautiful 28-year-old son.

Happy New Year

No resolutions here but plenty of plans and prayers and wishes for you and me:
May we all have more than enough peace and
inspiration and
forgiveness and
energy and
long days at the beach.


What's on your list?

2010

Facebook confession

I feel like I've been cheating on my blog with Facebook. I want to apologize.

It's just so easy to write a one-sentence message and send it out. With the blog, I feel a need to revise and shape a few paragraphs into something you might find worth reading.

The other Facebook temptation is the response from "friends," which is also effortless and thus much more plentiful and immediate. (It's all about instant gratification, isn't it?)

Today, I posted something that I thought was pretty mundane along the lines of: "Off to the library to work on a new book and I don't know quite where I'm going."

A few responses were kind and supportive, along the lines of, "You go girl," and "I have faith in you."

But there were several posts with suggestions of what I could or even should write next. I'm not sure why this drives me so crazy but it does. I wasn't shopping for an idea. Honest. That's not how novels are born -- not mine anyway.

I've learned my lesson. I'm going to limit my Facebook comments to the weather, food, and current events and save the more "serious" musings for you guys. Whoever you are. Wherever you are.

La Danse

I hadn't seen a movie (in a theater) since August. How is that possible?

But finally this past week I went. It was La Dance by Fred Wiseman, a documentary about the Paris Opera Ballet. Stunning footage of ballet rehearsals and performances, both modern and Nutcracker.

Saw Nutcracker here in Boston many, many years ago, first by the Boston Ballet and then when my daughter was a Polichinelle (some kind of doll? a candy?) in a suburban production. I am not a fan of the Nutcracker. Too long, too treacly, too commercial. I know this one ballet keeps companies afloat in America (maybe elsewhere, too) as the holiday performance to which little girls are taken in velvet gowns and headbands.

I'm not much for classical ballet at all, but La Danse focuses mostly on the modern stuff, which is as spiky and exciting and sexual as modern dance, with legs elongated to eternity by toe shoes and a technique that makes me gasp.

Best of all, Wiseman knows how to film dance, especially where to put the camera so you don't feel like you're missing something. He sees dance like a dancer.

The movie is 158 minutes long (yikes) and has no dramatic arc whatsoever. I kept wanting to hit the pause button so I could look at a program: I needed to indentify dancers/music/choreograhers... I needed to breathe and take in what I'd seen. It was dance by fire. Worth it to be sure. But I can't wait to watch it again on DVD.