Travelogue 2: Berlin vs Philadelphia

WHERE ALL'S ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS

Streets of Philadelphia
I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt.
I was unrecognizable to myself.
I saw my reflection in a window, I didn't know my own face.
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
On the Streets of Philadelphia.

I walked the avenue, 'til my legs felt like stone,
I heard the voices of friends vanished and gone,
At night I could hear the blood in my veins,
Black and whispering as the rain,
On the Streets of Philadelphia.

Ain't no angel gonna greet me.
It's just you and I my friend.
My clothes don't fit me no more,
I walked a thousand miles
Just to slip this skin.

The night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the Streets of Philadelphia

Bruce Springsteen

******************

Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love
Sometimes I think that I know
What love's all about
And when I see the light
I know I'll be all right.

I've got my friends in the world,
I had my friends
When we were boys and girls
And the secrets came unfurled.

City of brotherly love
Place I call home
Don't turn your back on me
I don't want to be alone
Love lasts forever.

Someone is talking to me,
Calling my name
Tell me I'm not to blame
I won't be ashamed of love.

Philadelphia,
City of brotherly love.
Brotherly love.

Sometimes I think that I know
What love's all about
And when I see the light
I know I'll be all right.
Philadelphia.

Neil Young

******************
The Streets of Philadelphia. City of Brotherly Love. As a city - dweller in downtown Philadelphia, my favorite urban activity was walking -- three or four miles in one direction, then three or four miles back -- admiring countless lovely green spaces and remarkable architectural details along the way. I swear I would discover new features every time, no matter how often I walked the same streets. When Gerry and I visited Berlin in 1993, we met a number of former University of Pennsylvania students, who seemed unaccountably disdainful of our fair city and the years they spent there before moving on to greener pastures in and around Europe.

I had hoped to share in their recollections of life in Philadelphia; but, strangely to me, they all seemed to draw one big blank. They had little to no knowledge of West Philly / University City, where I lived from 1993 - 2001 and where the University of Pennsylvania campus and my first Philadelphia house were located.

And they were even less familiar with downtown / Center City / Society Hill, where all the history happened and where I lived from 2001 - 2004.

Instead, their short - sighted experience was apparently bounded by the one or two buildings on campus where they attended class and whatever nearby apartment complex they had lived in at the time and some supermarket out in the suburbs where they would drive miles and miles away to get their groceries. What a wasted opportunity to shop local! They don't know what they missed by not enjoying the place while they lived there. A historical city like Philadelphia has so much to offer if you will just open your eyes! Some of the areas -- and I don't mean out-of-the-way places, but little gems and neighborhoods that are right in front of your eyes wherever you find yourself -- are truly as lovely as anything you'd see in Paris or Berlin. That was my thought on a good day.

Other days could be more frustrating. Philadelphia could never -- nor can West Lafayette, Indiana, for that matter -- measure up to the pedestrian - friendliness of Berlin (see previous post). One disheartening morning, I was out for a walk, right through the heart of downtown, when I heard a truck driver yell out of his window at a car driver, "Go, you f---ing idiot! Go!" Of course, everyone on the whole block could hear him. How can you have peace in your head with rudeness like that filling the air? All I could think was, why didn't I take my walk down another street? Not to mention that it was clear for all to see why the car was not proceeding yet, even though the light was green: because the driver was yielding to a pedestrian who not only had the same green light but also just so happened to have the right of way. I would have done the same thing had I been the unfortunate pedestrian or the picked on car driver. But more often than not the car drivers were just like that truck driver -- so impatient and filled with completely wrongful certainty even when breaking a clearly posted law. It wasn't always easy to accept the reality that the very same human density that made the city so exciting and wonderful could also what make it ugly and stressful. On a bad day, that unfortunate dichotomy just choked me up and made me want to go to another city or maybe another planet where life is nicer. [Come to think of it, even here in Indiana, without any human density, we have been honked at (and worse) just for slowing down to turn into our very own driveway.] So where is that nicer place?

Could it be Berlin? I must say that it was easy to imagine myself living there, something I've never felt in London and didn't feel in Paris. My friend Cate knew how to lighten my mood with her humorous yet wise perspective: "Trust me: rude people are everywhere. It's a fallen world. Your experience was just unlucky timing; even though we have no control over it, timing is everything. Why, even in Berlin, you were probably standing next to someone yelling obscenities in German, but you mistakenly thought they were saying, 'Hey, beautiful American woman, you are lovely in manner of Goddess on Grecian Urn.' Seriously, the only response to drivers like that is for someone to yell back, 'Awww, get a life.' "

On one of my early summer walks a dozen years ago, I approached a Center City corner and recognized Ed Rendell (Mayor of Philadelphia, 1992 - 2000; Governor of Pennsylvania, 2003 - 2011) standing a few steps out into the street, looking rather distracted and apparently waiting for his ride. I was also astonished to see there on the opposite corner a confused old man wearing two pair of pants, one of them down around his ankles, the other pair up where they should be -- thankfully. He was muttering and struggling to pull the outer trousers either up or down; who can tell. I thought, now here before me is some kind of parable or allegory of what life in the city can do for a man: the best result, the cream of the crop, power and education and benevolence and vision; or the ultimate disenfranchisement and marginalization and sickness, mental and physical. Two members of the body of Christ? It was a puzzling, disturbing sight to see. In a second or two, Ed's driver pulled up, and Ed jumped into the front seat of a big black car and away they went. The poor old smelly guy continued muttering, apparently oblivious to all around him. And I strode purposefully on my way to the bookstore or wherever I was headed.

My simultaneous brush with greatness and despair, over in fewer than thirty seconds. I had somewhat hoped to make eye - contact with the future governor and say, "Good morning, Sir" and signal my support of his campaign, but there was no time to catch his eye without shouting out. Cate and I had experienced a less conflicted encounter with our good Mayor one sunny day the previous fall just as we were finishing lunch at our favorite little French sidewalk cafe near Fitler Square:

After lunch, we decided to walk around the block before heading on our way, and as we came back around to the front of the restaurant, there was Mayor Rendell, taking a seat just a couple of tables away from where we ourselves had been sitting. Now, in this instance, I don't think that it would have been inappropriate to call out and wave hello (we were standing across the street from him), but we were just too shy. There he was, pulling his sunscreen out of his pocket and rubbing it into his forehead so that he wouldn't get a sunburn while sitting outside for his lunch. Isn't that just a slice of life?

When I saw him the following year, on the busy corner in Center City, I had to wonder what his thoughts were as he jumped into the car. Maybe he was just worried about getting somewhere on time. Was he as oblivious of the confused street man as the street man was of him? Or did Rendell see the poor citizen of his City and say a silent prayer? Does Rendell have a solution for this problem? Is there a solution? Is it a problem? Or just something that looks problematic to those who consider themselves to be more fortunate? What did Jesus say about this kind of thing? What would Jesus do? What could Rendell do? And how about me? Would I find it as cool to make eye contact with the street man as to wave hello to Mr. Rendell?

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Saturday, June 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com

An Old Street of Philadelphia

Cursive

ACCUSTOMED, CEREMONIOUS
D'Nealian Script, a cursive alphabet — lower case and upper case.

"I've always believed that there was a certain age
after which I would be all well and I'd stop feeling
as if I'd been abandoned here on earth with no explanation.
When I was little, the magic number was 6 --
the first - graders had maturity, secret information
(like gnostics), and lunch boxes. Then 13, 18, 21 . . ."
~ Anne Lamott ~
from Grace Eventually (p 243)
When I read these words a few years ago, I identified at once with Lamott's first - grade faith that all would be well and her misconception that the bigger kids had all the answers. Her gradual deflation expresses precisely the dismay that I felt back in grade school when I learned the truth about cursive writing -- that it was a sham, a trick, a false lead. My first real disillusion, way worse than finding out about Santa Claus!

I shared my cursive writing story recently with epigrammatist, writer and artist Michael Lipsey when he posted a similar sentiment on facebook:

"The biggest misconceptions of youth are that
somehow things will fall into place as you get older,
that there will be answers to the larger questions,
that you will attain maturity, and certainties,
and self-confidence. Perhaps this is true
if you have a talent for self-deception.
But eventually you figure out
that there won’t be any of these things --
that you will just have to muddle through
as best you can until the end."

[Previous thoughts from Michael Lipsey on my blog:
"A Little Crazier" ~ "Parallax" ~ "First Friday"
And future thoughts: "My Times" & "Winnow the Dreams"]
The words of Lamott and Lipsey brought to mind something that my wise eldest brother wrote to me back in 2002, following an introspective late summer conversation beside the pool:

Dave wrote: "In 1996, I truly thought that going back to school would be a turning point. I guess it was one more door that I thought had a magic chalice or a secret code word behind it. As a kid growing up I was always convinced that sooner or later I would turn a corner and all the concealed things of the adult and/or bigger world would be revealed. First I thought it was puberty but that just brought the usual frustrations and problems. Then I was convinced that it was being a teenager but that also was more frustration. Somehow I just knew that when I turned 16, Dad would take me aside and clear everything up.

"I was also sure that the Marine Corps [1965] would be a lease on a whole new life which, in a way, it was but not in the way I anticipated. When I was in Chicago and turning 21, I knew intellectually that it meant nothing but still had a secret hope that there was a missing block of knowledge that I would be privy too. After that I quit looking for magic doors but still held the inner kid hope that something would turn up. Hell I even joined the Masons when I was 42. There are no magical turning points. No epiphanies. No blinding lights. Just the slow process of living and doing and trying to make the pieces connect as you roll along [emphasis added].

"I have finally come to the conclusion that it isn't what you do but where your head is at when you do it. That's why old men can fish where there are no fish, talk when there are no listeners and write when there are no readers. They don't require the other side of the equation to feel complete, albeit a bit melancholy at times."
~ from Dave the Brummbaer

[Previous posts from Dave Carriker on my blog:
"Up & Down" ~ "It's Magic" ~ "Porsche"]
My brother's description of waiting for the big moment when all would be revealed to him by Dad or God or the Marine Corps or whomever reminded me of that disappointing day that I have never forgotten when I came home from grade school, having made the big leap from printing to cursive writing. I had been looking forward to this milestone for a long time (or so it seemed in my short life), starting back in first grade when I could only print, anticipating the secret joy of cursive writing to be learned in second grade.

I was kind of like giddy Gilderoy Lockhart (former Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher) who childishly brags when offering autographed copies of his photographs: "I can do joined - up writing now, you know!" (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, p 509).

The long summer between first and second grade came to an end, and I received my cursive writing workbook and soon mastered the task of joining the letters. Somehow, though, it was not quite as exciting as I had expected. In fact, after the big build - up, it did not really seem that much different than printing after all. Maybe the real fun was yet to come, in a more advanced step that would follow the mere connection of letter to letter.

So I asked my older sister Peg: "How long before we start connecting the words?" Imagine my dismay when she informed me that this would not be happening! Of course, the difficulty of deciphering "joined - up" words had never even crossed my mind. As far as I was concerned, that was just another one of those as-yet-to-be-revealed skills. I can still remember the "you-funny-little-kid" expression on Peg's face as she prepared me for the big let down: "You don't ever connect the words; those gaps are always there! What? This was it? No answers to the larger questions? I had arrived . . . already? Was I ever astonished!

It was supposed to be like those tender lines from Neil Young's beautiful song, "Philadelphia: City of Brotherly Love":

"And when I see the light
I know I'll be all right.
I've got my friends in the world,
I had my friends
When we were boys and girls
And the secrets came unfurled."
But no. There was no unfurling.

This was no doubt my first inkling that the Platonic vision of complete perfection might never become available to me here on earth. I guess we have to wait until the afterlife to see all the words connected -- and all the worlds. For the time being, we write through a glass darkly, filled with gaps, searching for connections.

Leonardo da Vinci's Mysterious Mirror Writing

SEE YOU IN TWO WEEKS FOR MY
Next Fortnightly Post
Tuesday, August 28th

Between now and then, read
THE QUOTIDIAN KIT ~ Earl's Birthday ~
my shorter, almost daily blog posts
www.dailykitticarriker.blogspot.com

Looking for a good book? Try
KITTI'S LIST
my running list of recent reading
www.kittislist.blogspot.com