Gratuitous overly-abstract post

Over time, the definition of "human" has expanded. By which I mean, the default experience, the normal one, the one projected onto all, has come to include more categories of person. Like when Zola wrote about members of the French working class - that was a big deal at the time, because imagine that, a novel not about rich people or the bourgeoisie! Or, to step back, when the French Revolution opted to include rich but untitled sorts as full citizens. Or, to step forward, when we realized that Man includes women. When we thought to remark on it if some sphere included only men. And so it goes - same deal with race (we start to see the problem of saying 'a woman' to mean 'a white woman'), sexuality, gender identity, and so forth. It's not to say that everything improves over the years - one can think of certain obvious setbacks even to this (say, the 1930s), but that, at least, seems to be the trend. This expansion of who counts.

The question I have is, (how) can this proceed without clunkiness? Without cringe-inducing jargon, political correctness, etc.? Should we perhaps accept, even celebrate, the clunkiness, while having a sense of humor about it to the extent possible?

Consider the latest front in this battle: transgender rights. My impression from social media and such is that certain people who accept that it's possible to be assigned the wrong gender at birth based on sex, who are accepting of any trans people they happen to meet, who, in other words, are not what one would think of as transphobic, will still wince at the word "cisgender," or, more broadly, at the idea that one can no longer assume a man has one set of biological qualities, a woman another. It seems, to such people, like overkill. After all, virtually all of the time, biological sex and gender identity are as one would expect.

And yet! Most people aren't gay, but we've learned to assume that a "partner" or "spouse" could be of either gender. Even in situations where most people are Christian, "happy holidays" is often heard. We know, even if we're talking about someone in a predominately male profession, not to assume that air-conditioner-repair-person will be a man. There's some right-wing backlash to such things, but the consensus appears to be that these are small ways of showing respect. That the harm done to gay couples if the likely answer (i.e. that a woman's partner is a man) is rigidly assumed exceeds whatever minor inconvenience to straight couples who may end up spelling out what used to be the default assumption.

I could go on (and on and on), but will leave that to you, my three readers.

Thoughts of the morning-loosely-defined

-Ed Koch, whom I felt fondly towards (the first mayor I remember, and one with a striking physical resemblance - correct me if I'm wrong, relatives who read this - to my maternal grandfather), but whom I'm apparently not supposed to remember fondly a) because he was more center/contrarian-left than left-left, b) because he messed up wrt AIDS, c) because he advised Jews not to vote for a politician who'd made at least one famous anti-Semitic remark (from the NYT obit; unclear why this was a problem - Koch seems to have alienated black New Yorkers in other ways, which I'd be curious to hear more about, but this one seems an odd thing to criticize him for), and d) because he never came out, which is assuming he was, in fact, in.

-The car I saw being pulled over by the police down the street. Who knew the police ever came here? I wonder what that was about? (If I had to guess, it was about the 15mph speed limit that none of the cars follow.)

-How Bisou responded to my leaving her (for a minute! in the other room! at her sleepy hour!) by yanking down a glass of iced coffee from the table, one that was I suppose sitting on a paper towel, one that had some pumpkin muffin on it, and I'd forgotten that when Bisou can smell a trace of food, this miniature poodle becomes seven feet tall and can reach anything. She's fine, and the apartment's vacuumed, but ugh.

-How sometimes I have so many tabs open and worry I'll copy and paste the wrong one into the wrong thing. Like, instead of linking to some op-ed, I'll share the jeans I'm thinking of buying, or the episode of the Mary Tyler Moore Show I was watching last night.

-How Obama denounced the Holocaust (yes, very controversial), and a National Review writer, Eliana Johnson, found a way to object. And the rest of the internet tries, fails, to make sense of the, uh, senseless. Johnson at first seems to be defending Nazism, but then, on closer reading (as well as, consider the source) appears to be claiming that because Obama didn't condemn the Holocaust in exactly the same language the author would have used, the president is basically a Nazi sympathizer. At first I thought maybe, buried in some of the most profound nonsense I'd seen in a long time, was a point I do agree with, one I even made here at WWPD: anti-Semitism, including the Holocaust, is far too often discussed as if it were a natural disaster. But no. This wasn't what Obama was saying - if anything, the aha! moment Johnson gives us, where we learn that Obama used "senseless" to describe Benghazi and the Holocaust, tells us that he uses the term as a synonym for "bad." Which, well, yes.

Reports from the mushy brain (3,000th post!)

-Does this movie look amazing, or am I missing something?

-Today I rediscovered how delicious hot dogs can be. Yum! This can't be good.

-I also rediscovered that the Astor Place Starbucks is not the most uplifting place ever, although it's certainly cleaner than I pictured it. (Low expectations.) Returning to Anna Karenina (vacation reading put aside during height of head-cold brain-mush period) works better when not overhearing women who look like a certain coffee-selling Wasillan, but far more makeup and hand-tatooage, discussing the difficulties of getting one's self, one's husband, one's baby-daddy, and one's baby through heroin detox. Levin's agricultural pursuits did not stand a chance.

The Overshare and the First World Problem

The first-world problem is an idea I first heard about when a college friend started a facebook group about them, perhaps the term was his invention. Prime examples: Starbucks put lowfat and not skim milk in my latte; I'm too tired from my i-banking job to make time for yoga; my Greenwich Village apartment is too small to comfortably fit my 18 boxes worth of clothing. Not all first-world problems are explicitly materialistic. Sometimes they're just dilemmas that require conditions of comfort to arise, such as, 'Does he like me? Let's discuss it over drinks.' What ties together all first-world problems is that while a friend might, just might, be sympathetic, if you allow the NYT Styles section to interview you, mentioning these sorts of problems will cause an avalanche of comments suggesting you volunteer in a soup kitchen--or better yet, in Iraq--to put things in perspective. It's quite clear that the share becomes the overshare definitively only once the fluffier sections of the New York Times take up your story. A commenter telling Emily Gould to stop being narcissitic (implication: stop being narcisisstic on the cover of a major magazine) might have a point, but until your friend reaches Carrie levels of self-pity, to be a good friend you let the other person vent, even if the complaint in question is objectively of little consequence.

But at a certain point, even friends lose interest in one's nonsense, or at least this is how it ought to work, (fictitious) Ms. Bradshaw's (fictitious)experiences to the contrary. Inner turmoil about problems that would sound idiotic if voiced have one rightful home, and that is in fiction. If a character in a novel is sufficiently developed, it is possible to identify with that character enough that its problems become your own, and that it starts to make sense why something that was not objectively tragic could cause immense misery. One expects novels to speak of the whole range of human situations, not just the Important ones, so it will be the rare reader of Proust who gets to the part where Swann realizes he's over Odette and thinks, 'With all the poverty and misery in nineteenth-century Europe, he worries about this?'

Reality entertainment of all kinds removes the barrier that allows us to truly care about first-world problems not our own. Once the problems are of another, real-life person, they elicit calls for real-world perspective. Obviously a fictional character fussing about her 18 boxes of clothes comes off as a fool--as Carrie does in the "Sex and the City" movie--but the standard for narcissism is that much lower when real people are involved.

Fiction works as an outlet to allow us to acknowledge that even ridiculous-sounding problems matter, without taking away from our real-life acknowledgement that on another level, they do not. It permits us to look at narcissism with compassion. What it also allows is for us to cover the full range of human experience without humiliating actual, existing people.

42 and loving it

Inspired by Rita's mission "rescuing things commonly pooh-poohed," I'm going to do the unthinkable and defend... Midtown. Especially Bryant Park--it's actually a pleasant place to sit, unlike Washington Square Park, even pre-construction. Spending too much time in the Village/Union Square area, I'd come to believe that every woman in Manhattan is 15 years old, 90 pounds, and wearing less-than-opaque leggings as pants. In fact, there are fully-clothed, adult men and women in the very same borough, not 30 blocks away! I know this is an odd thing to get excited about, but it's the truth. It's nice to be reminded of a world of working adults, and to be reminded that, at 24, I am not the oldest person in the world, nor, in "skinny" jeans rather than footless tights, the most formally dressed.

And, to put a less narcissistic spin on Midtown's appeal, I will point out that the Japanese takeout place on 41st near the NYPL is both cheap and amazing.

How not to be taken seriously

Inspired by Rita's accurate explanation of what a woman must not write about to be taken seriously, here are my unserious thoughts of the hour. I will redeem myself (for myself, at any rate) via interpretation of 1840s French-Jewish newspaper kerfuffles. But if I put that on the blog, I know, thanks to JSTOR, exactly how many people currently living would find it interesting, and the answer is, at best, three. So here goes:

-Are these my shoes?

-What should I ask for tomorrow when I go in for what's amounting to a yearly haircut? (We get paid in wine and cheese, not hair-and-makeup, so I have to ration.) I'm thinking a trim all around (I'm not just too grad-student-budgeted for frequent $60 haircuts, I'm also growing my hair out) and the reformulation of bangs out of what is starting to look like early-90s Jennifer Aniston "layers." Ick. I wouldn't mind something like this, minus the Sarkozy.

-My inner Upper East Side lady-who-lunches thinks this is fabulous. My 5'2" reality suggests that this would probably hit my ankles. Thoughts?

-Speaking of being small, sorry, but no. Being tall would be great. I'd like to be able to reach stuff in my own apartment (I live with a tall person, which is how stuff got so high up in the first place). I wouldn't mind being able to choose between the handle and the pole on the subway. Maybe for once I could buy a pair of pants and not tack on another $10-15 to the cost for hemming. "And even though people tell me I’m beautiful and I should be a model, there are times when I would trade in my long legs for a petite frame and tiny feet." Yes, that was me shedding a single tear.

Weekend accomplishments:

-Spotted Michael Richards, aka Kramer, at the 77th Street Flea Market. Looks just like on TV, but a bit grayer these days.

-Purchased bright-red nail polish at Duane Reade.

-Was asked, out of all the women in a coffee shop, where one can get a good manicure in Park Slope. Oxymoronic question? Perhaps, but also a major accomplishment on my end, as I'd painted my own nails (see above).

-Found what I was looking for in some 1840s French-Jewish newspapers. There is primary-source hope for not one but two final papers this semester.

-Finished Ni Droite Ni Gauche, necessary to get cracking on final paper #3. If anyone's interested but doesn't read French, it's been translated into English, and I'd recommend it over the new hot book on the topic for anyone interested in reading about fascism's roots on the left, or, for that matter, about why the stuffier conservatism is, the less likely it is to constitute fascism.

Le cinéma Duane Reade

This calls for a whiny post:

The day began with a man out front of what I can only assume was his brownstone shoveling snow obliviously and vigorously. I tried to make my presence known; this didn't seem to work, as he shoveled a heap right at me. Um, thanks!

This was on the way to the train. Once on the train, while still in Brooklyn, the conductor announced that there was a "small track fire" ahead of us. Since I was in the first car, I got to hear people describe the fire, which didn't sound all that small, and continued reading my book. Eventually we were allowed to leave the train, which was sort of but not quite in the station, and switch to a train that was running local when it ought to have run express, then express when it was anywhere in the vicinity of my classroom. I was not as late as I might have been, had I not anticipated that the snow would cause the MTA to throw up its collective arms and give up.

The day did pretty much pick up from there. I taught my students "avoir" using the question of whether or not there was a sheep in the classroom, which was good fun and I think effective. Then, after class, I found a copy of "Walk on Water" at Duane Reade! For $10! How it got there I'll never understand.

Under the influence

New York Magazine profiles the 283 best women's shoes available for purchase in our fine city. As it happens, one of the pairs they recommend are the flats I just got at Banana Republic, which at the time had 30% off on flats and boots, so get 'em while they're hot.

One benefit to male-female cohabitation I've never heard mentioned is that it makes one* inhibited in terms of how much one purchases in the way of Sephora products, shoes that one "will wear for years," and so forth. Partly this is just a matter of sharing a limited amount of closet/cabinet space, but it is also that I (one, one!) would feel silly coming home with a slightly different shade of nail polish from the one I currently use, or a liquid eyeliner when the pencil has not quite run out. If I buy a book and it doesn't have the phrase "French Jews" in the title, it can be for both of us. A dress from H&M is tricky.

I know I'm part of Generation 'Friends,' but this does, I realize, have an 'I Love Lucy' ring to it. That said, it's not that Jo cares either way, it's just that coming home to a female roommate, there's a whole discussion of 'ooh, what a cute new whatever,' but except on rare occasions, straight men** will be at best bored and at worst, 'Lucy, not another hat.'

*To borrow from Rita, by one I mean, of course, me.

**I'm sure I have an inhibitory impact as well when it comes to electronics, as I am so bored by the prospect of entering the Circuit City near campus that I keep not buying new headphones, although mine have been broken for ages, because it sounds just that dull. If this is all too stereotypical for you, and by you I mean on the off-chance anyone reads this blog, I assure you that I have some non-girly interests as well. When was the last time a girl-student edited the 'Viewpoints' section of UChicago's school paper? I thought as much.

Maltz's Complaint(s)

Photo credit: Clementine. Note the expression: I am not pleased with the water-to-air ratio.

1) The humidity: This is the reason why a) my hair has an unintentional but dramatic early '60s flip, and b) why the city's roach problem is worse than usual. First, across the table at dinner at an otherwise nice restaurant with my boyfriend's family. Welcome to New York! Then, spotted by Katherine, at an otherwise spectacular Belgian cafe in Brooklyn. Does this mean I can never go back?

2) The index cards: I may need to rent storage space for them once they are complete.

3) A brownie I had earlier had an unidentified object in it. Unclear what it was (redundant, sorry), but waa!

4) In a (non-Belgian) Brooklyn coffee shop earlier, with brownie, index cards, and Katherine, a woman at the next table who looked about our age inquired as to the Sears Tower-esque pile of papers in front of me. I explained that it was about French history, for an exam, and she asked me if I know French. So far no surprises. Then Katherine asked her what she was up to. She was, alas, taking a moment away from her husband (!) and baby (!!!) to get some work done. And she was our age, more or less, and was not a teen mother. Confirmed, I'm ancient.

5) Why can't I settle down with a nice Jewish girl? Oops, not my complaint.

Narcissistic blog post (redundant?)

Clementine had a copy of the NY Observer, so I got to read all about... my life thus far. There's a story about "Gossip Girl," the new New York version of "The O.C.," about the lives of those who attend single-sex schools in Manhattan. Then there's a book review about Stuyvesant, with a picture of the school and everything. It's strangely calming to read about how once I passed a test that few others do, especially when I'm about to take a big exam and maybe just a tiny bit scared out of my mind. And finally, there's an advice column called, "Ask a Theoretical Physicist." I can really relate to this publication.

Since last time...

As promised, blogging is more sparse, due to studying and panicking. Some excitement, though, from the last few days:

1) In almost one sitting (but the NYPL closes so early!) I read Michael Sebban's Lehaim. It's fascinating as a portrayal of contemporary French Jewish life, of what happens (or doesn't) when Zionism and Republicanism both fail, and of how amazing North African cuisine must be. It's also a bit of the Sartre-La Nausee school of I am profound and intellectual and no one else will ever understand me and so I will intentionally seek out dull, conventional types against whom to compare myself. Protagonist Eli S.'s romantic interest for much of the book, Chloe, is a less-interesting version of Brenda Potemkin from Goodbye Columbus. A rich, spoiled, beautiful Jewish princess who exists mainly to make the author-alter-ego narrator look good.

2) Jo and I took a day trip to Southampton, just to make ourselves look good. Some things you see there that you don't see elsewhere include massive houses with their own "service entrance," coffee shops that have, along with the usual flavored options, a "Private House Blend," book stores with volumes in the window listing however many places to sail "before you die," and much, much more. Most of which we probably didn't see, because without a car you see Main Street and Job's Lane; presumably the dining and nightlife Hamptons one hears so much about is less accessible to grad student tourists. But still, it was a fun day and a chance to remember what life is like outside of the vacation community of Park Slope.

3) I learned that the 42nd Street library is never open when you imagine it would be, and that looking it up beforehand, rather than using your imagination, is the way to go.

I am a famous Jew!

What do you know? I should note that this is the only photograph ever in which Jo and I appear to be the same height. Must be the shoes.

Coffee!

It's not going to kill you, but it is under attack all the same. The thinking man's drug of choice--there is even, it seems, a Facebook group devoted to Jacob Levy's caffeine consumption--is universally consumed but not universally accepted.

Coffee shops--free of alcohol, tobacco, and--thanks to the iPod and the lack of alcohol--conversation, are the new thing, if new means not all that new at this point. But I'm not ancient, and I remember a time when New York didn't have Starbucksim, when Barnes and Noble was just another bookstore. When you could go to your corner diner and drink a cup of Sanka served by a gruff and world-beaten waitress who deep-down cares about your problems, or at least your milk and sugar.

Since all other vices have modern medicine working against them, someone was bound to turn on the one vice I cannot (would rather not?) live without. The anti-latte crusade--multiple articles asserting that lattes are destroying our ability to save money--is an example of the extreme Jane Brodification of our society. If something is enjoyable, it must be bad. If it isn't bad for you, it must be bad for the workers. Wait, there's a version of the product that's produced ethically? Then the only thing left is that the product in question costs money. As most products do. Each time you buy a fancy coffee drink, you're losing what could (assuming you get one every day, versus never, ever getting one, since those are of course the two options) save enough to buy everything that really matters in life--say, a townhouse in the West Village? If you consider the accused lattes to be a replacement for the three martinis our generation is not having at lunch, and the two packs of cigarettes our generation is not having throughout the day, it looks a bit different.

And yes, you can make your own coffee. (Making your own diet Coke would be a bit more complicated.) I do make my own coffee. And buy my own coffee. Sometimes I am outside and $2-plus seems more worth it than a trip home and back. Sometimes I have an exam coming up and am a bit, uh, argh. The blogging will stop, or at the very least become nonsensical, at least until Project Overcaffeinated Flashcards comes to an end.

Question:

Is it possible to go to the Hamptons, and see anything other than the train station, without a car? Can you just rent a bike and see what's there? Which Hampton is the most worth seeing, for a one-day trip?

'What did you do this weekend?'

I just went through two bags of papers, sorting them into that which needs to be typed up and that which needs to be recycled. Pile 1: Renan's "Qu'est-ce qu'une nation?" Pile 2: many, many receipts for one coffee or cappuccino at Aroma. This activity kills the two proverbial birds, since it counts as both cleaning the apartment and studying for the exam. Most of my notes were not in these bags, but if only for neatness purposes, this should have been dealt with ages ago. Then again, as much as it was now or never, this is still pretty lame, as Saturday nights go. Really, impressively pathetic. And so it merits a blog post.

The other evening's activity, as you might have noticed, is adding labels to blog posts. Maybe the late-afternoon iced coffee #2 wasn't the best idea.

I am so old!

Turning 24 means I am no longer 'college age.' It means I could have a kid (not that I'm about to!) without any chance of them turning my story into a cautionary Lifetime movie. And it appears there is no longer hope of me being a gymnast, ballerina, or math prodigy, or of ever exceeding 5'2" by more than a 1/4-inch margin of error. I am now too old for many clubs in NYC that I've probably never even seen. The final days of 23 witnessed a sudden increase in the number of people calling me "ma'am;" it will only get worse.

But before the Jewish Anti-Deprecation League intervenes, I should add that this past year was pretty fantastic.

Thinking vs. doing

This weekend two remarkable things happened. 1) I was without internet for a 24-hour period, and 2) Jo and I carried a bookcase upstairs that's much taller than I am and a good bit shorter than he is. Now that I have internet at my disposal, I can nevertheless barely type. My arm! That was a heck of a bookcase, a mere $15 at a Park Slope stoop sale, and it fits almost all of our books.

While I was unable to move or blog, Jo read me part of a Times article aloud, about how the Sarkozy administration is asking the French to be less pensive and more active. My new favorite thing ever is the line, "'How absurd to say we should think less!' said Alain Finkielkraut [...]." It doesn't get better than that.

All on my own, pre-bookcase, I read BHL on Sarkozy. Levy mentions four of the authors whose works are on the MA reading list, not to mention synthesized much of recent French history, so I take it BHL would find this exam somewhat less of a challenge than most.

Levy's main point is the following:

And finally we discover — as will Americans — the first of our presidents for whom our relationship with the rest of the world is so clearly inspired by the best result of the antitotalitarian movements of the ’70s and ’80s, namely a fidelity to Israel that will no longer waver in the face of “ups and downs in our interests in Arab societies”; a sensitivity to genocide and in particular to the Holocaust, that “stain on the 20th century and all of human history”; a refusal of that “cultural relativism” that would allow us to look at the Chechen drama or the fate of Chinese political prisoners differently from events happening in Europe; a true concern that human rights be respected in relationships between states, between democracies and dictatorships; and last but not least, his view of America, for which, beginning in his preface, he declares an outright and unfeigned admiration if not love, contrasting sharply with the stubborn antiAmericanism that for decades has been part of the platform of much of the French political class.

So in light of all that, why did I not vote for him?

His response: "I will explain elsewhere, in another way, when it is time." He mentions a few things about national identity and Algeria, about an inability to comprehend the truth of the car-burning riots. Levy is not entirely pessimistic about Sarkozy now that the latter is in office, but with a caveat:

I am only saying that there is in Sarkozy a relationship to memory that troubles and worries me. Men usually have a memory. It can be complex, contradictory, paradoxical, confused. But it is their own. It has a great deal to do with the basis of who they are and the identities they choose for themselves.

The review was translated, so of course the question is whether he meant that the universal, gender-neutral "men" have a capacity for memory, or whether women have trouble keeping details about historical events in their minds. In which case all of us joint French-French Studies students are in a bad spot indeed.

Brick, exposed

When NYC brokers run out of "great" and "exciting" items to put into their listings, they always mention that an apartment has "exposed brick." Or, better yet, a "decorative fireplace." The new place, though not lacking in other ways, is blessed with a decorative fireplace constructed entirely of exposed brick. See above.

I can understand the appeal of "lots of light," "spacious," or "near the train." But escapes me why all of this brick is supposed to be a good thing. Nor, for that matter, do I see the point of having a non-functional fireplace, other than for the preparation of decorative s'mores.

Some decorative fireplaces serve as mantles, for Christmas slippers, pictures of the grandkids, and other essentials. Ours, however, extends flat up to the ceiling in brick, and thus is not only not functional as a fireplace, but not functional, period. As you can see, I'm at a loss when it comes to interior design, especially on such a difficult surface. Our brick is now slightly less exposed, covered with part of a Flemish Primitive Madonna and child, one postcard from Flanders, and one from Israel. Better than nothing.

Enjoy

Thanks, Nick.

And, also worthwhile:



There might be a connection between these two videos.