Brooklyn, New York
40°39'0”N and 73°56'59”W
So much has transpired since we last updated you all. In reflection we were in a cocoon, turning into mush, and then emerging. Our wings are still drying, but we made it. We landed on our feet in NYC and still have the strength to smile. For those who don’t know yet, Mary has transitioned her name to Oliver.
We can’t dive into NYC without sharing that a piece of our Volcano heart has transitioned to the next realm. Aunty Nona, the driving force behind our business, wedding celebration, and countless other social goods is no longer with us. She was fierce and we are so grateful for the opportunity to have spent time learning from her. She shared so many lessons and the most indelible: when working for the good of others sometimes things get in the way. When that happens you tell um “get out of my fucking way.”
There is no place in the world like NYC. Truly. The Mother of Exiles stands in her harbor, the huddled masses yearn to breathe free on her sidewalks, and the wretched refuse - oh the wretched refuse that many of us descend from is inescapable. A dear east-coast friend said New Yorkers are not nice, but they are kind. We completely agree. 5 months has found us hazed, dropped to our knees, blessed, surrounded in love, amazed, disgusted, terrified, freezing, and dripping in sweat. This is a city of dramatic contrasts and the trick is to master your balance. Here is how we have done it so far:
NYC appears to be the first landing place for many folks coming to the United States for the first time. Returning to the US after selling everything and traveling abroad for an extended time pivots one to a place of great empathy for those just arriving. The internet will have you convinced you can’t get an address without a lease and in NYC you can’t get a lease without a salary 40X the rent (which is often $3K+ a month). We learned that you just have to be nice to the folks at the post office. With a PO Box secured (eerily similar to our Volcano PO Box number) our next stop was the NY Public Library. A complete gem in a city full of financial mirages. A NYC library card opens a Pandora's box of resources including free access to museums, career support, bathrooms, and more primary and secondary sources than we could ever even imagine.
Hold the celebration for a minute. The city of immigrants also has hucksters and enforcements that will crash a reality in mere hours. You see, when we got to NYC we found a place to rent on Furnished Finders. Lots of hubbub about short term rentals being illegal, so we made sure the landlady lived in the building and we rented for longer than 30 days. All of that ended up being for naught, as we discovered, by way of a surprise visit by the NYC Department of Buildings, that our cozy little apartment was super illegal. We were 100% below grade. People have died in similar apartments throughout NYC by being trapped in fires and floods. We already experienced two floods in our short time. Our land lady tried to tell us we could stay. It was ok. Krystal did research and a guy on the phone said “DOB doesn’t work on the weekend, but they will be back on Monday to paste a physical vacate order.” Time to go! The Universe lined us up with friends who were headed out of town and needed a cat sitter and two younger girls looking for a 3rd roommate on Myrtle Ave. in the Hasidic neighborhood. We landed. It wasn’t perfect, but it worked. A month of sleeping in a room facing possibly one of the busiest streets in Brooklyn, tucked in the heart of a failing migrant resettling program, and next door to the Hasidic event center made for a really long month. After a bit of suffering we decided to take our dinner show on the road and enjoyed picnics throughout NYC in order to avoid total kitchen and home chaos.
A result of some portions of our hazing granted us a free pass to Cornwall, Connecticut for a few nights. Unlike the majority of the United States in NYC you can reliably get places on the train. We hopped on a few and were whisked away to a sleepy New England hamlet. Steve, one of our hosts, was driving us around and said “this is where the missionary school was. There is the plaque.” Reading slowly we realized we, somehow, ended up in THE town where the ABCFM missionary originated. ABCFM were the missionaries who indoctrinated the Hawaiian Islands with Christianity. It all started in, what is to this day, a tiny village. Totally freaked out, but not surprised by the synchronicity we headed to the local library for more information. We went to Henry ʻŌpūkahaʻia’s grave and marveled at just how small the world is. Note that his ʻiwi (bones) have been returned to Napoʻopoʻo on the Island of Hawai’i.
We made it through the dregs of shit because of many factors, but the most sassy was Hattie, the black cat. Hattie likes humans and we were grateful her humans trusted us to care for her while they were away.
Speaking of humans - so many folks have come into our lives. New and old friends have been making their way through NYC and our hearts in the past few months.
Why on earth would anyone put up with such righteous hazing? If for nothing else, the food. Tunisian dates in a Queens bodega are what inspired us to move here and the city has yet to disappoint. Georgia, Philippines, Albania, Sicily, Kosher, Bahrain…you name it there are folks in NYC making the food and speaking the language.
Spring in NYC is pretty spectacular as well. The tulips, cherry blossoms, and hints of spring were really special. And we, as unsuspecting new New Yorkers, didn’t know that sweltering summer was right around the corner. So we really enjoyed the days as they slowly warmed.
Krystal has been busy digging for family records in the NY Public Library Picture Collection and was happy to find originals of some images showing where her great grandmother was handed over to nuns in Palermo. This inspired a fellowship application that was not granted. We are just not NYC enough yet. The concentration of 8 million people pushes human creativity to the absolute edge in order to stand out. We are getting there!
Krystal landed a job as the Associate Director of School and Teacher Programs at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park. She overlooks Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty while attempting to navigate an ever-shifting field of societal chaos.
Oliver has been dusting off manuscript records and was offered a role as supervisor for a feminist black-owned bookstore in Crown Heights. She is also growing chives and hyssop from seed on the south-facing window sills. She found a skateboard in the basement and we have health insurance again.
Our new home is a testament to our house karma. It's a unique Brooklyn solution and we are super grateful. We are in a cohousing set up in a 4 story Brownstone. We have our own 1 bedroom apartment and share the first floor, laundry, and garden with three other folks. The house was built in 1871 and the main newspaper articles about the address mention funerals in the parlor. She has been here for a long time. Long enough to be located on a street named for a slave owner in a historic black neighborhood. We are making friends with the spirits and cleaning out old energy. If this all goes to shit we are going to start an energetic cleaning and decluttering business. It seems to be our calling right now.
NYC is full of more adventures that we can count. Museum archives, eclipses in cemeteries, really old and forgotten buildings, famous paintings in real life, live music, Garibaldi hide outs, and epic old maps. Every day is an adventure and one must be discerning as the capitalists are hiding in plain sight. Today we are writing this blog instead of marching in NYC Pride because we checked the 990 for NYC Pride. 8.5 million dollars last year…and one of the main sponsors is Target. Not sure what Target looks like in the rest of the country, but here they lock up toothpaste and laundry detergent.
The greatest NYC adventure has been the privilege of knowing dear Julia. Julia has been our patron saint (she is also Hattie’s mom) and she took us to her family's beach house on the North Fork of Long Island. Wow. This is how one lives in NYC! It was the greatest gift to slow way down, watch the sun and the sea, and eat really, really good food. Oliver also logged the first swims of the season in the Long Island Sound.
Julia also made sure we saw our first Broadway play! We caught Ani DiFranco in Hadestown and now we are hooked! The production was awe inspiring, heart wrenching, laughing, crying, and reminiscing as Ani’s voice pulled out the baby dyke memories in our minds.
A reflection on Ani the folks singer to Ani as Persephone:
“am i headed for the same brick wall is there anything i can do about anything at all except go back to that corner in manhattan and dig deeper, dig deeper this time down beneath the impossible pain of our history beneath unknown bones beneath the bedrock of the mystery beneath the sewage systems and the path train beneath the cobblestones and the water mains beneath the traffic of friendships and street deals beneath the screeching of kamikaze cab wheels beneath everything i can think of to think about beneath it all, beneath all get out beneath the good and the kind and the stupid and the cruel there's a fire that's just waiting for fuel”
“Sister, even at my age I believe the world can change Sister, this is how it starts A change of heart.”
We believe the world can still change. It IS changing. We are grateful for the youngest voters in our midst for keeping us rooted in the truth under the hood of this crumbling democracy. If New York City is the front line of cultural and political change in the US, fasten your seat belts. We don’t know what the US version of the Storming of the Bastille will be, we just know it is coming. And we also know what Aunty Nona taught us and we will work until our very last breath to make the world a better place.
