(no subject)

1. New York City is a study in contrasts and of neighborhoods. No neighborhood is the same. It feels at times moving through it as if it is a dozen different cities cobbled together into one. With various architectural styles and cultures melded together. Within just a few blocks, you can feel as if you've entered a brand new city or for that matter country. I remember thinking this today as I walked to the grocery store. Crossing Ocean Parkway with its large oak trees and 1920s buildings meandering my way through the brick and stone, metal gated, new style buildings that seem to have been shipped direct from Bangladash to the stone home with a Torah and Hebrew over the doorway. Then across Coney Island Boulvard, passing the seven-eleven on one side of the street and the authentic Pakistan-Indian-Bangladash restaurant on the other, down the street there are businesses with signs in Pakistan, Indian and Bengali. As I continue on my way to the grocery store, I walk down tree-lined streets, and past brightly colored multi-family old style victorian homes, painted purple, pink, blue, green, yellow with their lavish gardens and trim lawns - as if they were transplanted direct from Greenwich Village or Martha's Vineyard.

The people speak every language imaginable in the grocery store, I rarely understand a word, and it doesn't matter. When we need to - we understand each other. They dress every which way, from brightly colored saris, full Jewish orthodox, complete with hat and black cloak and white pressed shirts, halters and shorts, Carribean dresses, every inch of their body covered with cloth or very little covered at all. Some are covered with brightly painted tattoos. Yesterday, on the subway, an older woman, had a tattoo of two owls on one calf, and pussy willows with dragonflies on the other, across her shoulder and down her arm were flowers with butterflies -- all in bright colors. The man next to me had black stripes on his arms, neatly rendered.

The gift the city continues to give me, is it forces me to rethink how I perceive the world and to question what I told by various media outlets. People of various races, cultures, classes, religions, backgrounds, ages, etc -- get along quite well. Thank you very much. No violence. They are kind to each other. Gentle. And tolerant. It doesn't really matter that we don't think the same way, dress, talk, or walk the same.

My area is about as diverse as you can get anywhere, it's a cross section of various nationalities, and it is safe. It is quiet. It is peaceful. And trees grow along with gardens with little trouble.

So I've decided to block out the media, and it's various outlets, that roars and yells 24/7....in the distant it hums like chainsaws, fading fading to white noise. The world is not nearly as violent and evil as the media has painted it. I can choose to ignore it. And in doing so, it fades away.

2. It's pouring finally. The rain< I cannot see. Too dark. But I can hear it. Sounds like a waterfall, tumbling through the rocks, hitting trees and stone. A wall of water. It's a peaceful sound. Comforting. As if the sky has finally releived itself, releasing all that pent-up water that it had gathered up over the week.

3. I've reached a few epithanies this week...how to let go of worrisome thoughts, and to not care so much what others think. I find myself shrugging off more and more the expectations, demands, and opinions of others. It's not that I don't care what they think per se, but that I no longer feel that it has any relevance in regards to who I am, what I like, or how I feel. No one can define me but myself. If I allow someone else to do so -- I'm giving them my power. If I care what they think of me, I've handed them the power.

I've been watching a story via you-tube videos, and it's about a woman who worries too much about what other's think, even though she acts as if she doesn't give a damn. She's defensive and filled to the brim with bravado. She yells at them, puts herself down, and tears them apart, before they can hurt her. Destroying herself in the process. During the course of the story, she befriends a man who gets her, but regardless of what he says, she can't stop pushing it to the wall. She falls in a love finally with a man much like herself, who also does these things but in a different way, and somehow, together, they redeem each other, and discover a sort of peace.

It's a hard story to explain, but it speaks to me. And I've found that often the things that speak to me, to my heart, the most, are impossible to explain through words. When I try, I stumble, and the words I use are inadequate.

I have however learned that what works for one person, won't necessarily work for another and most often doesn't. Diets don't, books don't, movies don't, therapists don't, doctor's don't, medication doesn't, nothing does. I think that's the fatal flaw in how we think - we think in generalities. That what works for us, works for someone else.

I think, people like to take short-cuts. When someone or something is outside their knowledge base or understanding, they hunt a lable. OR if someone resembles something or someone from their past experience, they unconsciously place that person under that heading. It may just be that person has a huge nose and black skin or has a loud laugh or talks with a thick accent. It's easier to generalize. Simplify life and people. Put them under neat little headings. Avoid anyone who wears purple scarves, because everyone we've met who wore a purple scarf hurt us. Even if we've only met two people with purple scarves.

Instead of just stepping back and thinking, okay, I don't understand this. It is beyond my knowledge, and I'm okay with that. Or asking questions. Such as maybe it's not the purple scarf?