What happened to the American Spirit? What happened to that concept of mutuality?
You know there is still a simple premise that you can’t find in a book and that Washington hasn’t written regulations for that’s called “The Right Thing.” There is still a “Right Thing” in life. The Right Thing you feel inside you. The Right Thing is a calibration of your principles and your beliefs; your soul and your heart and your spirit. And we do The Right Thing in this country. Not because a law says Do The Right Thing, but because we believe in Doing The Right Thing. We believe in Doing Right by each other. By living your life by a code where you believe you are living in an honorable way, acting in principle. And you’re doing The Right Thing.
Mi gente, mi gente. Tenemos que hacer lo correcto.
Fact by fact across the morass.
Where’s the plan? Where’s the vision?
Yes we went through hell, but heaven is on the other side.
19 million New Yorkers deciding we can all live together in this small space, with a shared atmosphere, public transportation, mutual respect. That in and of itself is a miracle.
Take your blinders off, man, and put on a mask. Here we are in the eye of the storm, and you might as well use that umbrella you have on hand, if you want to be smart.
If you want to be smart, you will stop trying to find fault. There is futility in fault, and a lot of wasted time. Sometimes you got to learn to love what’s good for you, even if it isn’t the most stylish.
(Don’t we all know what coming down the runways in fall of 2020 anyway?)
That’s where I got my Southern (Queens) accent, says the Governor, in a very bad imitation of a Virginian. Virginia, the surrounding surrogate of Washington DC, the State in the Country consistently receiving the largest handout of the annual governmental allowance.
How few of us actually knew how the government worked, when it didn’t really need to work. Now it does, and we are all being given an inadvertent lesson in Government 101. Everyone is experiencing stress, noticing weak spots, experimenting with what works. Germany and France go in on policy measures previously unheard of between these two neighborly rivals and their Southern European counterparts.
Remember, we want to learn from this.
New York is the Port of Entry, remember? All those immigrants arriving to see the Statue of Liberty then heading over to Ellis Island? This is just how it goes. The coronavirus came to New York first just like all the rest of us. It’s no one’s fault. This is the UNITED States, by the way.
When compassion is in the White House, we HELP each other. But now it’s just politics 365 days a year. This is poison. This hyper partisan Washington environment is toxic for this country, and already cost us thousands of lives. A hundred thousand, to be exact. Politicians were elected to provide good government. That’s in their job description. And yet, all they seem to think about is power.
“Now, power is not an end. By nature, in essence and by definition, it constitutes exclusively a means. It is to politics what a piano is to musical composition…Fools that we are, we had confused the manufacture of a piano with the composition of a sonata.” (Simone Weil)
Stop the Politics and Do What’s Right and Smart. Compose us a sonata.
Here we are still living on the infrastructure built by our grandparents in the Great Depression while you all sit with your martinis watching small businesses close and talk about “getting lean” because your gout is probably killing you anyway.
Today the Governor is front and center in Washington, reasserting that America is also Tough and Loving, not just the Country of New York. All of us with that notable blue passport stand by watching the dance play out between Nation and State, watching as the one cuts off their own nose, just to spite their face.
First of Mr. Federal Legislator, you are NOTHING without the States. And there are FACTS.
If you want to pose the question of what states give and what states take, let me take this moment to shed light on who exactly has their hand out — mostly the same states who historically made their money off the sweat and tears of other humans anyway.
This is a really ugly, ugly, sentiment.
There is a financial equation that is this federal government, and there are still facts. Bloody beautiful facts. The hypocrisy is so insulting. People can still add, by the way, and subtract.
Let us redistribute affirmatively. I know it’s Washington, DC, but the truth actually still matters, even in all this fog and blather. That’s just my opinion, by the way. But we are indeed United. That is our inescapable name, and herein is a greater interest than your petty personal politics.
Oh to know, and not to know!
Oh! How did we not know?
Because we were all busy living our precious individual lives, that’s why. Driving on those roads built by our grandfathers. Flying around the world consuming things. Face down in a screen, posting opinions.
Today the Governor comes to us from Brooklyn, alongside Rosie Perez and Chris Rock, full-blooded Brooklynites here to speak to the people, with the people, for the people. Even if we aren’t all cool, we are all rock stars like the Governor. Family is what keeps up grounded, and today we are in the borough that Spreads Love the Brooklyn Way.
(Hell, it’s New York, you can have a conflict if you just say Good Morning.)
“You bring me joy,” says Chris Rock to Governor Cuomo, “I watch you every day.”
So do I, all the way here in Berlin, and it seems funny to think that Chris Rock and I are doing the same thing every day, thousands of miles away, across oceans, both of us listening to this Rock of Queens preach about Doing The Right Thing.
“Posse up and get tested,” Rock says, “If you love your grandma, get tested.”
Do it for the good of the family.
(“I just got tested,” he says, “Got a 65. Just barely passed.”)
But it’s like taking antibiotics, Rock says, you gotta take the WHOLE prescription. All the social distancing, the masks, the hand washing. Maybe we feel better, but we still have to take the rest of the medicine or otherwise it’s going to come back harder.
Take the whole prescription.
In my dreams there are fires spreading around the city and men with guns are killing each other randomly. Turns out my dreams are on the front page and cities around the world are descending into chaos.
How many times do we have to learn the same lessons?
All your self-interested Karens and Brads, and also your angry Black People on Instagram telling ignorant White Folks to just shut up and listen. Everyone has an opinion and scars and baggage. As Rosie says, we’re all on our last nerves, there is also an anxiety problem here.
So hey! Just do The Right Thing so we don’t have to keep seeing these crazy YouTube videos of people losing their minds or their lives.
Health has become a status symbol somehow, all y’all not wearing masks cause you think you’re cool like that young kid down there on Spring Break in Florida, inspiring that coronavirus isn’t going to stop me from partying.
(And now he’s dead)
Elbow bump.
As said by Paul Krugman — You know what makes a major contribution to quality of life? Not dying.
In this moment we breach the wall of normalcy.
Ich bin kein normale mensch.
This is what I say to the German man who asks me why I do not have a basket for my groceries, like normal people use. He does not realize he is the perfect example of Germanicness, the tendency to tell people how things should be done, without offering to help do them. I tell him if he wants to be nice he can give me a basket, and he seems confused. I need to repeat myself. We are both wearing masks. He hands me a basket in the end, but not without telling me to make sure I first lay the bottles of beer down flat at the bottom, and then pointing out, without picking it up, the butter that I meanwhile dropped on the ground.
In this time we are all abnormal together. A broken fifth wall, and ironically, only one screen. All you late night TV show hosts tuning in from your basement dens, dialing in to talk like we’re best friends hanging out on a sleep over, and it really feels like that sometimes.
Everyone is in real time, whatever real is.
I come home at 12:30am slightly drunk on red wine and good company, riding my lilac colored replacement bicycle that makes me feel like I’m 13. Coming home from a friend’s house on a Friday night, just a bit after curfew it seems. The town is quiet. Does not feel like a Friday night in a town that never knew how to sleep.
New York thinks it’s the city that doesn’t sleep, but they are amateurs compared to Berlin. New Yorkers still prioritize productivity, whereas in Berlin, nightlife can occupy lifetimes, and somehow still pay the rent. Berlin hustles harder. That is who we are.
Berliners are Assholes, and proud of it. Which is to say, they don’t take shit from no one. Everyone has a little chip in their shoulder here, a chip of the wall, grit from the shared history. All real Berliners hate hipster cafes and social media and oat milk cappuccinos. Screaming on the sidewalk at someone pissing on your doorstep, that’s real Berlin.
The Berlin underbelly is like an exploded grenade. It needs to explode its shell, in order to even find out what’s within. There is something almost spiritual to the leisure culture here, that turns to all those relatively wealthy New York transplants in their new penthouses near Ostkreuz and asks them and their fake wooden floors, Yes, and so what? What’s the point of your penthouse? What are you doing here, really? Does your penthouse get your into Berghain? Not that Berghain is the be all end all of Berlin, but it is a good measure of what is valued here, good and bad, black on black, Ketamine contained.
Success does not mean success here, in and of itself. In a way it is a perpetual lesson in letting go. How much of yourself can you let go, and still make it home? Accumulation is not the goal, but rather, resilience. Fortitude. Survival with some sex and laughter, then maybe a baby carriage in the outer boroughs.
Maybe there’s something about New Yorkers always ending up in either Westchester or Long Island or Upstate, or else Connecticut, and for that reason they do not really seem worth our time. Berliners go all in, even if it’s off a cliff. Is that legacy culture? For sure. And what of it? All these cracks are where the light gets in.
Perhaps that is the thing. When the sun shines here, people know it, they see it, and they line the canals with life for it. Go sit in front of your screens when the clouds come, for they will, that is guaranteed. But when the sun shines, get out and grill, go drink a beer on the bridge. Live, for this is the moment. It could all be taken away in an instant, by a cloud, or by something else.
My quarantine highlight was watching Felinni’s City of Women in my black silk knickers and fur coat on a pink velvet couch. Down the street a colleague learned how to twerk by watching videos on Youtube with a white girl. We had a party of three tonight and it felt absurdly luxurious, human contact, idle speech that led to deep things.
And laughter, yes, there was some of that. It is hard to laugh alone and remain genuine. But tonight we laughed at ourselves for singing in minor keys. Laughed because we come from the mutual community of vapid suburbia. Laughed at the beautiful absurdity of studying music in the midst of the Balkan War, just about as absurd, mind you, and perhaps necessary, as studying philosophy in the midst of a pandemic.
I come home to my party of one and say good night to my stuffed animal, Mr. Otter. I come home to my comforts, which we all have. Water bottles to keep us warm at night, all our potent phalluses.
Things to hold, that is what we crave.