Walking up from the underground grocery store at Columbus Circle, I can't help but pause and stare up at the enormous buildings surrounding we vessels of life. Sometimes it's good to remind one's self that you're alive. And if you live in a place like New York City, it's easy to let it all become the usual day in and day out, and to forget just where you are.
I'm carrying a huge bag in each hand, which makes me happy. I never lifted weights in Japan, but my muscles got great workouts from walking fifteen minutes to the grocery store and carrying a large bag in each arm. When I lived in San Francisco, I had to walk half an hour, and up and down an enormous hill too. Now I have a grocery store across the street, so I miss the workout. But tonight I decided to ride the train twenty minutes to a better store and stock up on some necessities. It's a little more expensive than usual, but this Christmas present I received, Food Rules by Michael Pollan, says it's a good investment to pay a little more for higher quality food at the grocery store.
As I stare up at the buildings, with the CNN ticker letting me know it's quarter after eight, I get into one of those reflective moods where I compare my life in this city now to my life in this city before I left for a physical journey (as opposed to the spiritual journey, which is everlasting). The previous night I attended an excellent hilarious performance called "Our Bar." My friend Glenn wrote and acted in several of the scenes. Right outside the entrance to the bar is a familiar advertisement: the one with Nelson Mandela saying that one person can make an enormous difference, and to pass on inspiration. That got me thinking about his quote about returning to a familiar place to see how you yourself have changed.
I start with the obvious, which is the content of my grocery bags. Several packets of organic tofu, broccoli, organic yellow onions, six cans of beans (including black, red kidney, pinto and garbanzo), organic tomato juice, organic bananas, an orange, an eggplant, five different types of green tea, and two boxes of Mint Newman-O's, because they were on sale and mint cookies are a gift from God and Paul Newman was one of the coolest men alive. I got five different types of green tea because I ran out three days ago and didn't have enough funds to replenish while I waited for my next pay check. I had just paid rent a few days ago, and assumed I wouldn't have enough money until I got paid at the end of the week. But this evening I saw that nobody had picked up our rent checks yet, so I decided to stock up on my morning ritual so that I would never suffer a drought again. I've been okay without the green tea, but I'm yawning more in class, and that's never good. Anyway, these groceries will get along beautifully with their new friends awaiting them at home: lentils, brown rice, carrots, a green bell pepper, pasta, grape juice, milk, Total 100% cereal, button mushrooms, kale, apples, more tofu, whole wheat bread, three different types of relaxing teas for the evening, some low fat kettle cooked chips and a few chocolate chip cookies left over from a whim the other day. I've actually mostly been on a cookie fast since I moved back from California, because I can't find any good ones around here, so I caved and got some Entenmann's and got them nice and melted in the microwave the other day. I'm only human.
When I left the city a few years ago, I tended to heat up chicken cutlets in the stove, order deli sandwiches, or get a slice of pizza on the way home. If I wanted to be my idea of healthy, I got Chinese food (because it came with vegetables and rice). I did eat a lot of tuna fish and eggs, and drink a lot of milk, but I didn't eat any vegetables. I would eat healthier food if served or out at a restaurant with someone, but I didn't know how to take care of myself. I started learning how to cook vegetables and rice soon after I left the city, and I've slowly been improving ever since.
Before I exited the grocery store I was listening to this playlist and it was on this rap song "Make You Feel That Way." By the time I walked outside, the next song, Hiromi's "Brain," had come on. I walked to the 1 train and saw a man playing the violin, so I had to interrupt the song to hear the unique opportunity for live music before putting my headphones back on and entering the train and opening my book, Thomas Pynchon's latest opus, which brings back memories...
I have just landed on a mysterious island I have waited to explore my whole life. I canoed here for about thirty minutes, pulled the vessel up onto the rocks, and made a run through the thin strip of trees separating the shoreline from the fields in the middle of the island. I grabbed my tent and backpack and sprinted because storm clouds had just come after a sunny paddle on placid waters, and rain had started to fall. Of course, as soon as I set up my tent and climbed inside, the rain subsided and the sun came out. I opened up a book called Gravity's Rainbow and began reading. It won many awards when it came out in 1974, but the author, Cornell alumnus, literary genius and fellow Long Island native Thomas Pynchon did not care about the awards. In fact, he is renowned as a reclusive author. He has a normal life in Manhattan, but he doesn't do interviews or appear on TV or talk to the media at all really. This was the first time I had ever camped out alone, let alone on an island I had never been to before, so he seemed like good company.
After about twenty pages I decided to explore, so I ate some Super Mario's I'd purchased at Bonnaroo 2007 two months earlier and had an adventure on an island in Lake Champlain that I had been staring at in the distance for much of my life. Ever since I'd visited with my friends as a senior in high school I had dreamed of taking some boats and camping out and having parties with friends. Those would come eventually, but I had to explore it by myself first. I walked around the whole island, heart broken, but that's another story. I didn't realize I was learning that I had to live with and love myself before I could love another. I worried that I had been passed up because the other guy was more manly, outdoorsy and so on, whereas I had been living the intellectual life in the city. I didn't like my publishing job, and the whole world seemed insane all summer after making perfect sense the first two weeks. As I watched the sunset over the Adirondack Mountains from my peaceful perch above the "cliffs of insanity" while noticing concentric circular patterns in the wave motions beneath, I realized that the most important thing I could possibly do with my life was to start eating vegetables. I had the ability to do most everything else, but I was seriously lacking armaments on the healthy consumption front.
As you can imagine, it took a few hours to walk the several miles of the circumference of the island, listening to music and the waves, finding stones for skipping and skinny dipping while the rainbow colored moon shined on the warm summer waters. I walked along the stony shore beneath stars seemingly strung together by some celestial labyrinth and bemoaned that there was no way I could ever write as well as Pynchon. His knowledge, poetry, insane bulging cast of characters and ability to weave dozens of stories together seemed beyond reproach. He wasn't even an English guy. He began as an engineering physics major at Cornell before leaving for the navy and returning to study English, so there was almost as much obscure math and science in his books as there were worldwide networks of the strangest characters involved in political intrigue and hipster bacchanalia. I never did quite understand the book. He had a habit of making sentences take up half a page, and I had to consult the dictionary more often than my literary ego could accept. It seemed like he was using some words just to show off that he could. We all want to showcase our talents, but he really seemed to be researching the deepest darkest catacombs of the English dictionary every other page.
After an initial wave of doubt, a voice inside told me that it was just fine if I couldn't write like Thomas Pynchon. Who could? I didn't have to write like him at all. I just had to write what I wanted to write. The world already had Thomas Pynchon. It wasn't waiting for him to come again in the form of me. It was waiting for a contribution from Ben Sanford. Besides, I would find another Tom I loved more--Tom Robbins--two months later, after being introduced to his works by the same girl who had driven me crazy enough to embark on a solo psychedelic exploration of an island. I had no idea that this was the beginning of a long series of solo hiking, camping and canoeing adventures, but I did know that I didn't want to be a recluse for most of my life. Embracing solitude to get in touch with something deeper both inside and outside is an incomparable ecstatic exercise, but must involve a return to fellow eyes and ears and hearts and minds to fully achieve its purpose.
Years later I am reading the newest Pynchon on the 1 train with two bags of healthy food at my feet. I am about to go to my apartment in Harlem, where I am enjoying my first residence in Manhattan, as opposed to previous stints in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. I am awaited by pictures of canoes on lakes in Minnesota with rainbows overhead, the moon smiling over Heart Lake in Yellowstone National Park, a small headlamp lighting the way through a bear management area in Wyoming on the way to this same lake of the heart, and a double rainbow at the edge of a storm in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota a few hours before getting close-range snorted at by a bison and waking up and getting lost during a lightning storm. There are pictures of pyramids and jazz stages and airports, and wine barrels and New York City monuments and Buddha statues in Japan and oh so many of my favorite water, Lake Champlain. There are quotes from my favorite thinkers and writers and adventurers and doers, and even a few quotes of my own writing, which have appeared on this very web page I began creating more than four years ago. Another habit which had yet to find a steady rhythm in the old days.
I realize I am hungry. I know I have some great food awaiting me.
Best of all, I'm not worried about trying to be someone other than who I am supposed to be, both physically and intellectually. People will see what they will see, but I don't care unless they see the real me, and that's when I feel free.
I'm carrying a huge bag in each hand, which makes me happy. I never lifted weights in Japan, but my muscles got great workouts from walking fifteen minutes to the grocery store and carrying a large bag in each arm. When I lived in San Francisco, I had to walk half an hour, and up and down an enormous hill too. Now I have a grocery store across the street, so I miss the workout. But tonight I decided to ride the train twenty minutes to a better store and stock up on some necessities. It's a little more expensive than usual, but this Christmas present I received, Food Rules by Michael Pollan, says it's a good investment to pay a little more for higher quality food at the grocery store.
As I stare up at the buildings, with the CNN ticker letting me know it's quarter after eight, I get into one of those reflective moods where I compare my life in this city now to my life in this city before I left for a physical journey (as opposed to the spiritual journey, which is everlasting). The previous night I attended an excellent hilarious performance called "Our Bar." My friend Glenn wrote and acted in several of the scenes. Right outside the entrance to the bar is a familiar advertisement: the one with Nelson Mandela saying that one person can make an enormous difference, and to pass on inspiration. That got me thinking about his quote about returning to a familiar place to see how you yourself have changed.
I start with the obvious, which is the content of my grocery bags. Several packets of organic tofu, broccoli, organic yellow onions, six cans of beans (including black, red kidney, pinto and garbanzo), organic tomato juice, organic bananas, an orange, an eggplant, five different types of green tea, and two boxes of Mint Newman-O's, because they were on sale and mint cookies are a gift from God and Paul Newman was one of the coolest men alive. I got five different types of green tea because I ran out three days ago and didn't have enough funds to replenish while I waited for my next pay check. I had just paid rent a few days ago, and assumed I wouldn't have enough money until I got paid at the end of the week. But this evening I saw that nobody had picked up our rent checks yet, so I decided to stock up on my morning ritual so that I would never suffer a drought again. I've been okay without the green tea, but I'm yawning more in class, and that's never good. Anyway, these groceries will get along beautifully with their new friends awaiting them at home: lentils, brown rice, carrots, a green bell pepper, pasta, grape juice, milk, Total 100% cereal, button mushrooms, kale, apples, more tofu, whole wheat bread, three different types of relaxing teas for the evening, some low fat kettle cooked chips and a few chocolate chip cookies left over from a whim the other day. I've actually mostly been on a cookie fast since I moved back from California, because I can't find any good ones around here, so I caved and got some Entenmann's and got them nice and melted in the microwave the other day. I'm only human.
When I left the city a few years ago, I tended to heat up chicken cutlets in the stove, order deli sandwiches, or get a slice of pizza on the way home. If I wanted to be my idea of healthy, I got Chinese food (because it came with vegetables and rice). I did eat a lot of tuna fish and eggs, and drink a lot of milk, but I didn't eat any vegetables. I would eat healthier food if served or out at a restaurant with someone, but I didn't know how to take care of myself. I started learning how to cook vegetables and rice soon after I left the city, and I've slowly been improving ever since.
Before I exited the grocery store I was listening to this playlist and it was on this rap song "Make You Feel That Way." By the time I walked outside, the next song, Hiromi's "Brain," had come on. I walked to the 1 train and saw a man playing the violin, so I had to interrupt the song to hear the unique opportunity for live music before putting my headphones back on and entering the train and opening my book, Thomas Pynchon's latest opus, which brings back memories...
I have just landed on a mysterious island I have waited to explore my whole life. I canoed here for about thirty minutes, pulled the vessel up onto the rocks, and made a run through the thin strip of trees separating the shoreline from the fields in the middle of the island. I grabbed my tent and backpack and sprinted because storm clouds had just come after a sunny paddle on placid waters, and rain had started to fall. Of course, as soon as I set up my tent and climbed inside, the rain subsided and the sun came out. I opened up a book called Gravity's Rainbow and began reading. It won many awards when it came out in 1974, but the author, Cornell alumnus, literary genius and fellow Long Island native Thomas Pynchon did not care about the awards. In fact, he is renowned as a reclusive author. He has a normal life in Manhattan, but he doesn't do interviews or appear on TV or talk to the media at all really. This was the first time I had ever camped out alone, let alone on an island I had never been to before, so he seemed like good company.
After about twenty pages I decided to explore, so I ate some Super Mario's I'd purchased at Bonnaroo 2007 two months earlier and had an adventure on an island in Lake Champlain that I had been staring at in the distance for much of my life. Ever since I'd visited with my friends as a senior in high school I had dreamed of taking some boats and camping out and having parties with friends. Those would come eventually, but I had to explore it by myself first. I walked around the whole island, heart broken, but that's another story. I didn't realize I was learning that I had to live with and love myself before I could love another. I worried that I had been passed up because the other guy was more manly, outdoorsy and so on, whereas I had been living the intellectual life in the city. I didn't like my publishing job, and the whole world seemed insane all summer after making perfect sense the first two weeks. As I watched the sunset over the Adirondack Mountains from my peaceful perch above the "cliffs of insanity" while noticing concentric circular patterns in the wave motions beneath, I realized that the most important thing I could possibly do with my life was to start eating vegetables. I had the ability to do most everything else, but I was seriously lacking armaments on the healthy consumption front.
As you can imagine, it took a few hours to walk the several miles of the circumference of the island, listening to music and the waves, finding stones for skipping and skinny dipping while the rainbow colored moon shined on the warm summer waters. I walked along the stony shore beneath stars seemingly strung together by some celestial labyrinth and bemoaned that there was no way I could ever write as well as Pynchon. His knowledge, poetry, insane bulging cast of characters and ability to weave dozens of stories together seemed beyond reproach. He wasn't even an English guy. He began as an engineering physics major at Cornell before leaving for the navy and returning to study English, so there was almost as much obscure math and science in his books as there were worldwide networks of the strangest characters involved in political intrigue and hipster bacchanalia. I never did quite understand the book. He had a habit of making sentences take up half a page, and I had to consult the dictionary more often than my literary ego could accept. It seemed like he was using some words just to show off that he could. We all want to showcase our talents, but he really seemed to be researching the deepest darkest catacombs of the English dictionary every other page.
After an initial wave of doubt, a voice inside told me that it was just fine if I couldn't write like Thomas Pynchon. Who could? I didn't have to write like him at all. I just had to write what I wanted to write. The world already had Thomas Pynchon. It wasn't waiting for him to come again in the form of me. It was waiting for a contribution from Ben Sanford. Besides, I would find another Tom I loved more--Tom Robbins--two months later, after being introduced to his works by the same girl who had driven me crazy enough to embark on a solo psychedelic exploration of an island. I had no idea that this was the beginning of a long series of solo hiking, camping and canoeing adventures, but I did know that I didn't want to be a recluse for most of my life. Embracing solitude to get in touch with something deeper both inside and outside is an incomparable ecstatic exercise, but must involve a return to fellow eyes and ears and hearts and minds to fully achieve its purpose.
Years later I am reading the newest Pynchon on the 1 train with two bags of healthy food at my feet. I am about to go to my apartment in Harlem, where I am enjoying my first residence in Manhattan, as opposed to previous stints in the boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens. I am awaited by pictures of canoes on lakes in Minnesota with rainbows overhead, the moon smiling over Heart Lake in Yellowstone National Park, a small headlamp lighting the way through a bear management area in Wyoming on the way to this same lake of the heart, and a double rainbow at the edge of a storm in Wind Cave National Park in South Dakota a few hours before getting close-range snorted at by a bison and waking up and getting lost during a lightning storm. There are pictures of pyramids and jazz stages and airports, and wine barrels and New York City monuments and Buddha statues in Japan and oh so many of my favorite water, Lake Champlain. There are quotes from my favorite thinkers and writers and adventurers and doers, and even a few quotes of my own writing, which have appeared on this very web page I began creating more than four years ago. Another habit which had yet to find a steady rhythm in the old days.
I realize I am hungry. I know I have some great food awaiting me.
Best of all, I'm not worried about trying to be someone other than who I am supposed to be, both physically and intellectually. People will see what they will see, but I don't care unless they see the real me, and that's when I feel free.
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