NEW YORK STORIES: MULBERRY STREET

The plane had circled JFK for three or four times. Passengers aboard the flight were quiet, almost somber, resigned to the indignity of a delay after traveling from Korea halfway across the planet in less than 12 hours riding a tailwind as they crossed over Canada.

Jerome was traveling light, but he was in no rush. For a while he stared out the plane's window, trying to recognize Long Island landmarks. He really had nothing to rush home to, if this really was home.  He wasn't prepared to be back in New York. But in just a short while he would be at Washington Square, trying to make sense of the past ten months.

Jerome was struck by his awareness of feeling so solitary. When they finally landed, he gathered his bag, passing through customs quickly and without incident... unless you counted the slight tug at his heart as he passed through the exit where he had embraced Cassandra for the first time when she arrived like a angel come to save him from himself.

There did not seem to be many people at the taxi dock. His suitcase was quickly stowed and suddenly he was hearing the driver ask if he preferred a route into the city. Jerome replied "Your choice," and they were off on the beltway to Manhattan.

It was raining. Jerome had always liked New York in the rain. Before he moved to New York, he would write short stories about the lights glittering in the rain on New York streets. Once in Manhattan, he realized his stories had failed to capture the magical quality of the lights glistening on the streets... with the rain, the city was quieter and more intimate. He thought about the first time he had walked down Fifth Avenue with Cassandra shortly after she had arrived in August. It began to rain, and she saw a street vendor and bought an umbrella. "It's so romantic," she whispered, "walking with you on Fifth Avenue in the rain..." She smiled as she pulled him under the umbrella, and he felt her bonding with him.

Jerome was so lost in thought that he scarcely noticed as the taxi crossed the Manhattan Bridge and turned onto Canal Street. His heart began to beat faster as he recognized many places in Chinatown where Cassandra and he had shopped and an array of restaurants they had explored together. "What is this?" he thought, feeling a surge of anxiety as the taxi slowed and made right turn turn up Mulberry Street.

"No! Not this way!" he thought to himself. This was certainly not the expected route to Washington Square. His heart almost skipped a beat as he suddenly found himself on Mulberry street where Cassandra and he had lived from the first day she arrived. "Why did the cab take this route? I wasn't prepared for this..." He felt agitation, a pang of anxiety as they passed the Airbnb where they had begun their life together and then crossed Grand Street where they had walked hand-in-hand so many times. The first time she took his hand, she held it as though she would never let go.

Jerome wondered why he was so distressed. The days spent on Mulberry Street were the happiest of his life. He remembered before Cassandra arrived, walking on a summer day in late August along Houston and turning right at the Puck Building to wander south on Mulberry. He snapped photos and shot short videos as he walked along the street. 

Gradually he could feel the pull of Little Italy as he neared Grand Street, Indeed, the decorations were up and there was a festive atmosphere for the upcoming celebrations for  the Feast of San Gennaro in September. It seemed as though the festival was already beginning, but Jerome remembered how crowded Little Italy would be at the height of the celebration. There were performances, processions, contests, music concerts, and dancing in the streets...but the food was the real miracle of the Feast of San Gennaro, a festival held every September in Italy to honor Saint Januarius, the patron saint of Naples and Little Italy. 

Finally, Jerome sat at an outside table of a small restaurant On Mulberry near Grand Street. The sun was blazing overhead, but he could detect the smell of September in the air. He could sense Cassandra's arrival with the coming of Autumn, the ripening orange trees on Mulberry street, and the miracle of a renaissance about to change his life.

ZEN, ARCHERY, ECKER & DERNINI

I started to take a journey... the same journey I took maybe thirty years ago. I knew that I was attracted to ZEN because in some small way, it seemed similar to Phenomenology, which I had been introduced to by my colleague who seemed almost like a Zen Master to me. David Ecker taught in the art department at NYU Steinhardt. He was an arts craftsman and art philosopher. I had completed my doctorate at Columbia University, and never once had any class introduced or discussed phenomenology. In some ways David Ecker was my Zen Master who led me through endless inquiries that opened my world.

We had many adventures together, and they alone would be worthy of discussion and documentation, even now. 

I happened to try the Audible book for Zen in the Art of Archery.  Forget it! It's better to let your imagination conjure up the sound of the master's voice. The reader on Audible distorts his voice to attempt to sound like a Zen Master, but it just doesn't work for me.

But I am sympathetic to Herrigel's quest. He made many assumptions about what the experience of learning Zen through what the Japanese consider a deep and profound art grounded in the way of Zen...much more than a philosophy. There is a spiritual connection that is difficult for those of us who have been biased by Western philosophy and assumptions. 

David Ecker is no longer with us. But his presence lingers. He pursued the creation of knowledge through experiments such as Navigating Global Cultures. It so happened that a marvelous artist and inquirer, Sandro Dernini, came to study with David Ecker in the Art Department at NYU . I was fortunate enough to tag along and help in the launching of marvelous experiments in art as a way of knowing and inquiring---of ART as the disruptor.

So my journey here was originally planned as a shared adventure, but it fell by the way because Time had other plans. I pause now in the debris of a botched beginning that turned into a new opportunity of discovery. I see many of my past mentors in their separate journeys, but somehow beckoning me to be out and about. Life is perpetual discovery, uncovering each moment as immortal. 

WHO IS PHADREAS?

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Days...Months...Years have passed and yet, Phadreas has remained in the background. Phadreas has eluded me for years despite my attempts to find him and bring clarity to my wanderings. I’m not sure why he has emerged at this moment as an enigma that must be confronted. Yet, there he is, with his gleaming eyes and mysterious smile that bewilders and confronts me. It is not because he is amused, but rather that he understands what I seek, even though he won’t reveal anything to me directly. 

Phadreas is the shadow of my thinking, and my thinking is the essence of my Being, my sense of All and the essence of Allness, which we often call Eternity. Eternity is the contradiction of Time ending. Time and Being, as Heidegger so eloquently observed, are the essence of existence, the fundamental pulse that dismisses the void and utter disintegration.

Phaedrus often lurks around the entrance to my DOJO. As written in Wikipedia, a DoJo is a place for immersive and experiential learning. In Japanese, it literally means PLACE OF THE WAY. A few years ago I tripped out on Neil Diamond's THE WAY, where the musical structure continually shifts its grounding, it is a musical journey seeking closure but ends in an echoing rift of ongoingness. (Wyzard Ways: BEING ON TIME)

My journey deepens as I retrace the steps of a student of Zen In The Art of Archery. How important our process of Being is linked to Breathing... even to inspire is to take in... inspiration comes from our effortless breathing...appropiating the outside and bringing it into the center of ourselves, and holding it as it nourishes all life processes, then exhaling to return a transformed energy to our environment. Breathing and Being are central to our existence. The student working with the Zen Mastery is from a different culture. Coming from Germany to Japan, he brought a certain Western resistance to the Japanese ethos of Zen. His journey is about reconciling his cultural clash with a different and equally valid reality. It is not unlike F.S.C. Northrop's The Meeting of East and West, that reveals how the war with Japan was inevitable as a clash of cultural values, and how this meeting of two opposing cultures transformed our ideas about Art and Existence.

Later Robert M. Pirsig would build upon this cultural dichotomy with his epic Zen in the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Years ago, I took this journey with Pirsig, and now, decades later, I renew this quest for a deeper understanding of my own journey. But I do not journey alone. This time the quest is with an artist searching a different artistic itinerary, and yet as we work within mutual boundaries of awareness, we may discover new destinations, new clearings in the dense forests of doubt.

It seems that life itself is the journey, and from the beginnings of our utterings on Earth, since antiquity, Homer's The Odyssey defined our quest to return home, for we awaken in a wilderness and know not whom we are. 

In the end, isn't our quest about Identity?