Optimism

An annual survey released last week found that New Yorkers are a happy bunch. According to an annual survey on Livability conducted by the Municipal Art Society, 84% of New Yorkers said they were satisfied or very satisfied with their life in the city. Manhattanites are the most optimistic with a level of 88%, versus Staten Island at 67%. And 81% of New Yorkers are optimistic or very optimistic about the future of their city, an increase of 5% over last year.

I'm not sure how that plays out nationally. I'm guessing New Yorkers' upbeat outlook is substantially higher than say those who live in Detroit or Baton Rouge, mainly because the economy here has shown some potential for growth. But I think it does mirror how outsiders see Americans, as a tirelessly upbeat, happy, positive nation of people.

I have always been intrigued by this global perception. Is it true or is it a facade?  In Australia, we grew up with images of American corporate employees pumping the air with their fists in a joint show of success and solidarity, sportsmen high-fiving in the winners circle and a plethora of American self help books offering us suggestions on how to "be your personal best," "beat the blues" and "win friends and influence people".  Of course, America is also the home of the motivational speaker, the celebrity minister and positive affirmations. And I don't deride any of this, because like many others, I do believe that great things come to those who are optimistic and that negativity attracts more negativity.  But I also believe in the yin and yang theory; you can't only have one thing. For every positive, there is a negative, every up, a down.  So like with alot of generalizations, I did not believe Americans could always be "up" - until I lived here.

Coming from a country that is cynical of anything that smells vaguely of corporate brainwashing, it was really disconcerting to work in an environment where everyone really IS positive and optimistic all the time. The first thing the cynic thinks is "oh, this person is not sincere, they're nice to your face and back stab you afterwards". But trust me when I say that every American I have met or worked with - and they're not all from New York -  truly wants you to "have a nice day," makes sure "you are very welcome" and will go out of their way to help you. And they really believe tomorrow will be a great if not better day than today. I must admit it's been hard not to get swept up in this wave of ebullient enthusiasm for life. And in a funny way, I really like it! It makes you feel good about everything you are and do.

Of course, there are the disbelievers of all this "false" optimism. Barbara Ehrenreich is one such realist. She wrote a book called "Bright-Sided; How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking has Undermined America". Ehrenreich argues that Americans are a cheerful, optimistic, and upbeat people because this is their reputation as well as their self-image. However, more than being a temperament, this positivity is seen as the key to success and prosperity because they are relentlessly told that it is. She then goes on to knock this down with an urgent call for a new commitment to realism, because in her opinion, this irrational optimism has led to disaster. 

It's a fascinating read, particularly for a non-American like myself. And there are a lot of reasons to totally agree with Ehrenreich. If you are interested, there is an excellent review of her book here. But for me now in this moment, I will just remain content to live in such an optimistic city like New York.

image: following your bliss

Fall Cometh

When I woke up on Sunday, I could smell Fall. For the first time this year, I stepped outside my apartment and the smell of dank earth and dying leaves punctuated the air. The sky was grey, the temperature was below 20 degrees Celsius and the smell was definitely Fall.

I think I'm ready. We had such an incredible summer, I can't complain now about the dropping temperatures. It signals a total overhaul of the clothes cupboards, moving the whites to the back and the camels and darker colors to the front. It means shorter days and colder nights. Cups of hot chocolate instead of pineapple juice, and thick, yummy soups instead of salads. It also means a totally different color palette surrounding me; red apples, bright orange pumpkins, burnt yellow grass, chocolates, caramel and tartans. I know I'm ready.

To herald this change, I stole the Anesthetist's car while he was tinkering on the boat and went for some heavenly ambles in a new-found and now favorite Ward Pound Ridge Reserve, an hour north of the city. It is 4200 acres of rivers, pastures and forest. A great place to relish these wonderful fall colors and smells!

Day of Atonement

Today is Yom Kippur - Day of Atonement and the most holy day of the year for Jewish people. I have to know these things now, working for a Jewish company and dating one. The office was empty today, as were the streets. The Anesthetist has been at home fasting all day and is now getting ready to go to the "Synagogo" as he calls it. I'm such an ignorant heathen that when my Jewish colleagues asked me yesterday if he would be fasting, I blithely responded, "No, he'll be slaving away at his hospital all day, thinking of dinner and what red wine he wants. " Turns out I couldn't have been more wrong. No wonder they looked at me with pity.

Yom Kippur started at sundown last night and ends at nightfall tonight. It follows Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which was celebrated 10 days ago. During these in between 'Days of Awe,' you are supposed to seek forgiveness from friends and families. Then today is all about abstaining from everything - food, drink, sex, email - and attempting to mend your relationship with God. This is partly done by reciting the 'Vidui,' a public confession of sins.  The rest of the day, according to the Anesthetist, is filled with much navel gazing and balancing up your good with your bad on God's measuring scale. He hasn't asked me for any forgiveness this past week which I find odd to say the least, so either he thinks he's in the positive or his balance sheet is so bad he's afraid to face it.

I really wanted to go with him to the Synagogue tonight so I could hear the Shofar being blown. The Rabbis used to blow a ram's horn but now it could be made of any material. It has a wonderful history that you can read about here.

After learning more about Yom Kippur,  I realized that I actually do have a connection to this religious day - through music. At the beginning of evening service on every Yom Kippur, communal prayers commence with Kol Nidre, a legal document that is chanted with haunting undertones.  It turns out that when I played the cello many moons ago, my favorite and most spiritually moving piece was the Kol Nidrei Op. 47 by Max Bruch. I never understood then the religious significance of this music, only that it touched something deep inside me. I used to continually listen to a recording by my musical heroine Jacqueline Du Pre and vowed that one day I would play the piece with as much intensity as she. I'm not sure I ever made it to that level, but I still think it's one of the most beautiful pieces ever written for cello. Here is another musical hero of mine - Pierre Fournier - playing it. Enjoy.

image: reform judaism

Lazy Sunday

Without a smile - Without a Throe

A Summer's soft Assemblies go 

To their entrancing end....

- Emily Dickinson

Sunday afternoons in September. Heaven. The light is softer, the breeze is cooler and the heat intensity has dissipated.

I was supposed to go racing out to Greenwich last Sunday to watch a friend play polo, but instead I chose to be lazy and potter about the house. There is nothing I like better than to sit at my kitchen table and look out the window into the plane tree that almost stretches into my apartment. I am lucky enough to have an Italian-red low rise building across the street from me and light galore streaming in the window. So it's hard really to imagine I'm even in New York. Except for the occasional fire engine roaring past my building, Sundays are very chilled in the West Village. Cups of tea, toast with lashings of butter and Vegemite, and the arts section of the New York Times is all I need until lunchtime. Then it's time for a stroll down to Three Lives and Co, a brilliant local bookstore, before finding a table outside a little cafe somewhere to do some people watching. The Village is always good for that. You might spot a poor tourist hopelessly lost in the zig-zagging streets of downtown, Sarah Jessica Parker hiding behind a huge pair of sunglasses or a couple of beautiful looking models after a big night out.

As the sun moves lower over the Hudson River, duck into some charming little boutiques hidden in the Village's side streets. Then it's time for a stroll along the river or if you're lucky, you may chance upon an impromptu jazz session in Washington Square Park. As evening settles, the tourists go back to their midotwn hotels, the bars and restaurants fill with the locals for early dinner and I retire to my bed with a book and a cup of hot chocolate. Who said you have to achieve something every day! 

Up the Hudson

I love the Hudson Valley. I love the farms, the produce, the quaint towns and of course, the mighty Hudson River itself.

There are so many places you can access the river for walks, a quick dip or some quiet contemplation. On Saturday, I dragged the Anesthetist up to Garrison, an hour's drive from the city. There we wandered along the moss-lined paths of the river before stopping into the view Russel Wright's grass-walled cliff house at Manitoga, a very special place. All in all, a very green, serene Saturday!

Sweat, Steam and Soaking in the East Village

The Anesthetist took me to experience a true New York icon this week because apparently I've been uptight and belligerent. He marched me to the Russian & Turkish Baths in the East Village so a fat Russian could whip me with oak leaves and put me back in my place. It worked. You don't mess with those men. In fact, you don't really mess with anyone in there it's so crazy.

These baths have been serving the New York community since 1892 and to be honest, the interior looks like it. Not that it's dirty, but it certainly ain't no Four Seasons spa experience either. For $35, you can spend all day in there if you feel the need. There's a sauna, a steam room, an ice-cold dipping pool, an impossibly hot Russian room with 20,000lb of rock cooked overnight to make you think you have arrived at the centre of the earth, and a lot of nude bodies of all shapes, colors and sizes.

The Anesthetist took me on the mens'a and women's night so he could ladle more and more hot water over the rocks in the sauna until I was begging for mercy from the heat. His answer was to add a few drops of lemongrass oil and more water. We then moved to the Russian room draped in very unsexy pantaloons and drab brown towels. There I experienced my very first platza oak leaf whipping. I'm sure my whipper was a retired Russian Olympic weightlifter. But it certainly made my skin feel wonderfully soft afterwards.

These Baths are a must-do when visiting New York, if only for the people watching. You get members of the American Ballet there, contorting into positions deemed impossible. Then there are the mafiosa types from Brooklyn who sit huddled together in corners, the models unwinding during fashion week, the Turks drinking mint tea on the roof deck and every other type of two-legged New York inhabitant who wants to relax, show some skin and steam out those pores.

When you look at the paintings depicting hamans, they were much more beautiful than my one on East 10th St. But if you close your eyes and breath in the steam, you can almost see the minarets and hear the calls to prayer that so remind us of where this group bathing came from .

Ingres: Turkish Bath

Le Barbier: Turkish Bath

images: painting all, nuance 1979, commons, wikimedia

Summer in Connecticut

Last weekend officially marked the end of the Summer season here. It's been too short! No more white, no more early Friday afternoons, no more long, lazy days. To mark this sombre occasion, the Anesthetist decided to take me to Litchfield Hills in Connecticut, a state that borders New York but is so far removed in attitude as to be a distant cousin.

The Connecticut you see in magazines is exactly the same as the one you actually venture into. The roads are perfect, the gardens expansive, the houses even more so, everything is white and green and picture perfect. Even the barns don't have peeling paint. And of course, there are covered bridges which I LOVE and plenty of little antiquing towns like Warren, where the superb store Privet House is located, owned by the guy who founded Lambertson Truex, which was sadly, swallowed up by Tiffany after the financial crisis.

But I digress - as you tend to do when staying in Litchfield Hills. It's very easy to just meander through the heavenly country lanes and feel a million miles away. We stayed in a lovely place overlooking Lake Warramaug, a huge lake that you can cycle around or kayak on. We did both. And in our world of make believe,  we tossed up the pros and cons of having a country house in Litchfield Hills or a beachouse in Amagansett. Because of course we can afford either - not!

images: 2-3: privet house, 

In the Garden of Eden

Historic Hudson Valley is a network of six wonderful historic homes in the Hudson Valley. Its mission is to "celebrate the history, architecture, landscape and the material culture of the Hudson Valley", making sure people like me get to see how the other half lived all those years ago.

Last weekend, the Anesthetist decided I was in need of some historical American culture, so he took me to visit Montgomery Place, one of the most important and meticulously preserved historic sites in the US.

Located on the banks of the Hudson river about 1.5 hours north of Manhattan, this property is 380 acres and was the home of the wife General Montgomery who died in some war in the late 1700s. His wife bought the property shortly after his death and it remained in the hands of the same family for almost 200 years. Today, the house is considered an architectural landmark and the totality of the estate a unique American treasure.

The house wasn't open when we went, but the grounds are amazing. There is an orchard, a herb garden, wonderful lush lawns that roll gently down to the Hudson River, ancient oak forests and acres of lovely fields full of the typical oversized trees that are so common on the East coast. It was the perfect place to be on such a hot Sunday.

first glimpse of the house

the herb garden

potting shed

overgrown arbor

one of many fish ponds

a friendly frog

view from the verandah to the Hudson River and beyond

rolling lawns

natural spring

view over the swampy part of the Hudson

image 1: go to hudson