Bury Me Standing Too

I just finished reading this book on an ethnicity whose history, lifestyle, philosophy, and physiognomy I have long felt a particular intrigue and even semblance to. This book details the vast spectrum of idiosyncrasies privy to this people, through the eyes of an outsider who spent years among them. I will not go into all of what I learned, except for a short sampling of morsels.

The term "Gypsy" is old Greek for "Egyptian", and though they may have spent time there (along their centuries long journey), their origin (and that of their idiom) is somewhere in the vicinity of Rajasthan (India). Misunderstandings concerning them are abundant the world over, not to mention their perpetually unmentioned mistreatment in the hands of reluctant host cultures. The names they are known by are as varied as the regions they inhabit, some of which can be easily confused with other meanings. For example, "Roma" has nothing to do with Italy's capital city. "Romani" has nothing to do with the eastern European country that ironically happens to be home to the highest concentrations of them (only because they had at one point been imported as slaves). Rom, Dom, Lom, Sinti, Gitano, Tsigani, Ziguener, Manush, and Kale are a few of the titles they wear.

Call it romanticizing, but I have an internal propensity towards sharing in the traditional Gypsy male's custom of wearing the same single suit, all the time, regardless of occasion or weather, until it falls to pieces and has to be replaced.... or even the bright color mosaic of the female Gypsy. I desire as much a knack for multilingual fluency (3 is not enough) and declamatory accordion skills (add flute and xylophone) as I have for photographic memory of cartographic layouts and the sophisticated contents of city blocks and rural roadsides.

I wish to be passionately free of meaningless materialism and permanent, sedentary anchorage. I want to be an adjunct Bulibasha, though I'm allergic to Biznitsa (money not earned through manual sweat). As a ubiquitous cabdriver, I by default have a reputation for dishonesty, though I've done everything possible to live honorably. I'm wanted and detained for my talents, not crimes, though those talents are often mistaken for crimes. I assign value and priority to all events equally, though serially (per moment). I can't stay still and I can't follow someone else's orders if they oppose my principles. I have all the markings of a zingaro. The only thing I'm terrified of is being shiftless, a trait that frequently creeps up on us members of the Leo sign, though it might be least expected of us.

It fascinates me that the Rom and the Jews have shared a guilt of showing too much initiative (of the wrong kinds). This book points out several similarities and dissimilarities among these two and other groups as well: "labored on their own in the jobs that no one else could or would do and sold their goods and skills door-to-door. But this for the moment is where the parallel between Gypsies and Jews as migrant middlemen ends. Far from the start of a brilliant career, their situation in the Balkans came more to resemble that of American blacks."

I can feel the ear bursting clamor of wandering musicians, the clairvoyant hustle of free and spirited tradesmen, the scraped subsistence of mudlarks, and the solemn silence of segregated servants. The preening of and being preened by the intimacy of a tightly knit community.

Limitation can force one to be resourceful. One of my favorite quotes in the book was: "The Masai of east Africa are said to believe that all cattle belong to them; the Roma of eastern Slovakia, it seems, feel the same way about potatoes." Foppish, raucous, and fecunditious were a few of the new words I learned in this book. Not that I'll remember them for long. If you don't read this book, perhaps at least watch 'Latcho Drom', which may not answer many questions, but may uplift your spirit when watched with an open mind. As a passenger in my cab once said, "I hope that extensive genealogies become less expensive so that we may collectively rid ourselves of our ingrown xenophobias." My wish for such a drop in cost for that service goes a small step further. So I may put to rest the mystery behind my Romanian roots, slightly darker skin tone than Ashkenazis in my family, and my pre-Romanian ancestry.

Geography Nerds Not Dead

What do Uzbekistan and Liechtenstein have in common? They are the only two "doubly landlocked" countries in the world. What do Bolivia and Tibet have in common? Well, they do seem to be kindred spirits of some sort. However, I'm aiming at a more remote answer. Both once had a coastline. One lost it to Chile in the late 1800s and the other was its own empire in the 9th century, currently under occupation.

Modern Khazaria

I've been intensely reading this book called "The Thirteenth Tribe" by Arthur Koestler. It's about the history of Eurasia since medieval times, in regards to the emergence and geographical movement of Jews, or at least people who consider themselves as such, and everyone else who came into contact with them. The book is an anthropological gold mine. It adds a lesser known dimension to all the theories concerning our ethnic origins.

Then again, there is the simple fact that human beings are 99.9% genetically identical and .1% diverse. So what's all the fuss about the .1%? Well, in my opinion, our external differences really don't matter, and I'd even dare to call myself an avid xenophile. But as a Jew, or at least someone raised secularly, yet informed their entire lives both by maternal and paternal relatives that they are in fact a Jew, I find it necessary to ask, "how so?" No doubt I feel Jewish and most would say I "look Jewish." Still the question remains. Where did my ancestors live throughout the centuries and with whom did they commingle?

All I know is that my dad's side is entirely Romanian, as far back as we can trace, and my mom's side is a mix of Polish and Ukranian, with the exception of my mom's mom's mom. She's a Colombian hybrid of mostly Spaniard Catholic roots, with a dab of Mestizo (indigenous Amerindian), and she's about a century old (still alive.) She married a Jew who escaped from the Bolshevik Revolution in the Ukraine and somehow landed in Colombia, hence she become one of the first ever, fully-certified Colombian converts to Judaism. Since that was like three generations ago, and the family has remained closely tied with the rabbinical community in Bogota and Medellin, it is safe for me to presume that this crucial ingredient to my Jewry is valid.

Mind you I'm paying lip service to some orthodox notion, which brings me back to the book I'm reading. It declares that in the 8th century a Shamanistic (Turkic) empire that sat between the Black and Caspian seas converted to Judaism in order to gain equal respect from its two Abrahamic neighbors (the Muslim Caliphate and the Christian Byzantium), and that the Ashkenazim of today are mostly their descendants, as opposed to the almost mythical pure-bred Semitic lineage. The truth is none of this really even matters because to be a Jew is something from deep down inside. It's a soul thing, not an ethnic (or religious) one.

However, I still hold on to this general inquiry about universal Jewish identity because I have always sensed a sort of racialist hypocrisy in the way many European Jews tend to view the Jews of Arab nations, and indeed their view of Arabs in general (not to mention gentiles in general.) Whatever happened to the integrity and definition of the word "semitic"? And I'm not even delving into all the other directions and amalgamations occurring throughout Jewish history, which are all mentioned in the book. All I know is this: a chosen people are a people chosen by the creator to carry out the responsibility of improving the world on behalf of all humanity, not for self-serving interests and in the name of exclusivity.

MUPNY OF THE YEAR

The Gusberto Gilgulim Award

for Most Unique Park in NY goes to...
COLUMBUS PARK

...in Chinatown (but only when it's filled to the brim with people and all their oddities). It sits on the same spot as the legendary 1800's immigrant slum (Five Points), bordered by Worth, Baxter, Mulberry, and Bayard Streets. On most days, you can find hundreds of people milling about in this tiny green space for a spectrum of purpose.... Tai Chi, table games (like Chess), live traditional Chinese music, relaxing on enormous rocks or with caged birds, sports, festivals, outdoor events, public assemblies, etc. It's a cacophany of human spirit, secretly tucked away behind the neighborhood, but every so often a tourist or two will stumble in and sit down in awe.

IMAGE CREDITS & INFO:

THAT WAS THEN (painting by George Catlin)
THIS IS NOW [picture by Gastrodamus (flickr)]

Carro Bomba En La Plaza Del Tiempo

Image Source: Lone Star Custom Builders

"No more New York," said Crysta Salinas. The 28-year-old Houston woman was stuck waiting in a deli until 2 a.m. because part of a Marriott hotel was evacuated because of the bomb.

It's too bad some Texans won't be visiting our great city again. Unfortunately, as is the general description of the social fabric of Texas, these folks are over-reliant on comfort, convenience, and complacency. Many Texans live one hundred years as if it were one day, where as many New Yorkers live one day as if it were one hundred years. I lived in Houston for 5 years, from age 10 to 15. I know a little bit about Texan culture.

Don't get me wrong, the Lone Star state will always have a tender place in my heart. Its dirt roads are where I learned to drive, at the beginning of a long road to NYC cabbie-hood. It's where my most beloved cousins, aunts, and uncles reside. It's where I migrated as a snowbird for a handful of weeks this past winter. It's where I'll be this upcoming December and January, along with the beautiful Rhode Islander I'm sweet on. She's set to have an entire section of the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, to display her creations.

But no place, at least out of everywhere I've been, compares with my great city. Once a Gothamite, always a Gothamite. To get back on the subject of car bombs, I'm grateful that whoever loaded up and left that Pathfinder there didn't exactly have all the right ingredients for chaos. I admire the vigilant street vendors who realized the SUV was out of place, for having a sense of ownership and responsibility toward the public space around them. These are the true New Yorkers.

A proud salute to the cabdrivers who sat patiently through nightmarish jams caused by abrupt and massive street closures on Saturday night. We have many blessings to count. Let's be thankful the image below wasn't actualized. Let's be mindful of how good we have it, and how emotionally tiring it must be to live in cities like Baghdad, Kabul, Lebanese and Colombian cities in the 1980s, etc.

In this day and age, car bombs are primarily a Middle-Eastern experience. A curious and unknown fact though, is that they were first introduced to the region by the Stern Gang, a Zionist group trying to kick Britain out of Palestine in the 1940s. Did you also know that in 1920 an Italian member of the Galleanists left a horse-drawn wagon carrying explosives and shrapnel in the Financial District of Manhattan, killing 38 and wounding 400?

Photo Source: http://www.sabbah.biz

A BOOK REVIEW OF

I enjoyed this book quite a lot. It's exciting to learn about the state of the profession, decade by decade, since the early 1900s. I enjoy how people's image of taxi driver evolves and devolves, in ever-fluctuating waves. I'm especially fond of the fact that the author himself used to be a cabdriver. He is now the distinguished Fulbright professor of history at Beijing University. Here are a few of my favorite chunks from the book:

"The NYC cabdriver personifies the energy and zeal of the world's greatest city."

"Cabdrivers make up the human element of the New York City experience."

"In taxi is the university of all humanity."

"Cabdrivers only stick together in traffic. The rest of the time they suffer from occupational loneliness and often wind up as blabber-mouths, exhibiting a weak drooling volubility to passengers (now cell phones) in which sense and nonsense are inextricably linked.

"When adjusted for inflation, cabdrivers' annual income was less in 2003 than it was in 1929."

CUTE CARTOON-LIKE RAMBUNCTIOUSNESS

"New Yorkers strived to commemorate their cabbies. One work of art created unexpected problems. In April 1996, the city installed a statue of a man hailing a taxi at the corner of 48 and Park Avenue, The piece was entitled "Taxi" and was sculpted by J. Seward Johnson. Within a few weeks, the city had to move the statue back away from the street because cabdrivers competing for the fare were getting into accident after accident."

MID TO LATE 90's W/ MAYOR GIULIANI

"As city harassment of cabbies increased, turnover soared to over 50 % in less than 5 years. Garage owners who in the past had supported the TLC 's crackdowns, now complained that good drivers were leaving the industry because of the burdens of petty but expensive tickets."

QUOTE FROM EACH DECADE

"After dark, the cabdrivers guided and transported willing New Yorkers into forbidden worlds (1910s)."

"The Jazz Age was celebrated in NY as nowhere else, and cabdrivers were eager participants in the whirlwind frenzy of nightclubbing, easy sex, and social liberation that made the 1920s in NY so notorious."

"The public credited cabdrivers with oracle-like knowledge about politics, the 'chief source of public opinion' about candidates" (1930s).

"Rationing of gas and of private car use and fares flush with wartime earnings made cab driving easier and more profitable than ever (1940s).

"Newspapers ran stories that assured New Yorkers that in the event of an atomic bomb attack, cabdrivers' knowledge of city streets would help avoid traffic snarls."

"Observers began to describe cabdrivers as philosophers, comparing them with Socrates, who was a 'great street talker in Athens' " (1950s).

"Generous cabdriver stories enchanted Americans who identified cabbies as the ultimate New Yorkers".

" The average hackie is an honest, hard-working, careful and skillful driver who's been doing this kind of work 'temporarily' for many years." -journalist Hy Gardner

"Now cabbies ranked with coal miners and below farmhands (1960s)".

"A helpful article in Reader's Digest listed the many ways cabbies helped policemen and performed acts of courage and charity." (In response, Mayor Wagner proclaimed January 27th to be 'Taxicab Day')

"The backseat was so uncomfortable that a journalist argued that fares were forced into a "paralytic yoga position, fists clenched into the white-knuckles mode, knees to the chin, eyes glazed or glued shut, bones a-rattle, teeth a-grit." " (1970s)

INTERESTING DATES

1/1/1970 A law made yellow the official color of all medallion cabs, required that they be equipped with bullet-resistant dividers, and assigned undercover police to drive cabs.

3/2/1971 Mayor Lindsay signed a law creating the Taxi and Limousine Commission.

(artwork by Red Grooms, whose depictions of taxi life are classic)

VESTIBULE OF LOLLIGAGGERS

Every so often a cabdriver will run out of change because an unbroken succession of passengers pay with 20 dollar bills. Other times a cabbie might have accumulated a thick wad of singles, fives, and tens... to the point it don't even fit in the crevices of the cockpit or shirt pocket anymore. But when all you have is large bills, you can't pick up another passenger until you've parked and gone inside an establishment to break a Jackson or two, or maybe even a Grant. The hot dog and donut carts are quite often unwilling and it can take forever to find legal parking. So my instinct is always to jump out of my cab at a red light and bum rush every taxi on the block, which usually works after the fourth or so try.

What I've discovered though, is that the nicest cabbies in New York are the ones from Tibet. Without fail, they're always ready to help. May their unique language and culture survive the onslaught of now almost 6 decades of foreign occupation. In this city there is a united nations of taxi driving. There are very few countries I haven't seen represented. I have close friendships with a Guinean, a Turk, an Uzbek, a Paraguayan, a Belorussian, an Algerian, an Honduran, and an Afro-Chinese American. We'll periodically call each other to warn of new police traps and bustling taxi stands. Or we run into each other at the airport holding lots.

If it were up to me, I'd be backpacking around the world right now. And that has been the plan ever since I graduated from high school. But no one on my mother's side of the family had completed college yet, so she badly wanted me to not waste time. I spent 5 years earning a degree and another 3 working odd jobs to pay off the loans. And now that the coast is clear, the economy is nearing collapse and my immediate family needs my financial assistance. So instead of using the taxi income to save for travel, I'm having to give every bit of it to my parents, so they don't go bankrupt. They can barely keep up with their debts and I feel as if I'm repaying them for having provided me with such a fantastic childhood. Meanwhile, my little sister is almost half way through college and plans to be the next Jean-Paul Gaultier or Vivienne Westwood. And she wants to utilize her fortune on improving the lives of others (including us), if only those filthy rich with a fashion sense still exist after she graduates.

Last week a Haitian woman who lives in the Pacific Northwest jumped into my cab at Kennedy airport. As we approached the Van Wyck Expressway I saw the total traffic standstill that awaited us up ahead. So I let her know that I taking the Conduit as an alternate. While trying to hear what 1010 am had to say about the L.I.E. and the BQE, so I could then choose between Woodhaven and Atlantic, she interjected with what would become a long metaphysical rant about using mind to manipulate matter. She more or less blamed my lack of spiritual strength for every thickening of cars we'd encounter. I do understand that our thoughts have more power than we give them credit for. Having studied Kabbalah for years, the concept of mind over matter isn't alien to me. But this woman seemed to lack a sense of humility about it all. She was almost conceded in her mannerisms, no matter how much I tried to not pass judgment. She instructed me to check out Ramtha and read up on the double slit experiment. Here's a cartoon video demonstration that effectively blew me away.

A couple days ago I was idling on Madison Avenue in the mid 40s. I always remain in the same spot when a passenger leaves. I jot down worthwhile observations or read a few lines for a minute, to advance in my book, and then glance at each mirror and window for prospective fares. If no one shows up within 60 seconds I'll merge back into the flow of everlasting fiberglass. But often enough someone does get in during that short span. In fact it's usually a better tactic than to instantaneously jackrabbit back into the continuum like most cabbies do.

This particular time four suits from Chicago knocked on the shell. I popped the trunk and walked back to load their luggage. All four of them were so happy-go-lucky and wide eyed, but started scratching their foreheads when I reached for their bags. In such a routine operation, I hadn't noticed that I'd forgotten about some cargo of my own. Two dusty old chairs that I'd salvaged from a dumpster were occupying the large tub of usually empty space. As I set them out unto the sidewalk to re abandon them, these lovely Illinoisians suggested that I place the chairs on top of the luggage. "But they're dirty!?!" They consulted each other for an instant consensus. I was going to end up keeping the chairs that I needed for the table I 'd found weeks ago in Queens. You see my mother had donated much of our furniture to the college kids who moved into our old apartment in Brooklyn. So we had to re scavenge the curbs.

Jill, an investment manager, got into the cab by where the viaduct sucks Park Avenue up into the Helmsley building. She was headed to a doctor's appointment precisely where the viaduct ends on the south side. We crawled above Vanderbilt and 42nd for almost 10 minutes to go the 4 blocks. She said something on the phone, so nonchalant and ruthless that it reverberates in my head. "....so did we get Margaret laid off yet? We've got to that a.s.a.p. if we want to remain...." No remorse. No human being on the receiving end, on the verge of losing what we, in this society, base our self worth on. Don't take me for a hopeless altruist or even a bleeding heart. I am one of those who believes that our economy has been based on air. On speculation and debt, as opposed to something more substantial, like resources and brow sweat. Perhaps it will take a total meltdown for us to rethink our roles and our purpose in life. Speaking of learning to appreciate what you have, Chop Shop is the best film I've watched this month. It's about this homeless kid in Queens who makes it work by being really resourceful and he even helps his older sister out.

The other day I was waiting at the garage to be assigned a taxi. It was around 2:30 am and there were about 4 other drivers sitting in the lounge alongside me, hoping to get a head start on their day shift. I started chatting with an older guy from Bangladesh, who was enthusiastic to teach me everything he knew about the history of his country. The catchiest thing about his lecture was his repeated use of the number 3,500. That is how many miles lie between Pakistan and Bangladesh if you go by sea, which is what they used to do when it was one country, because India was enemy territory. 3,500 is also the amount of princes in the Saudi government and the amount of nukes possessed by India, if I understood him correctly. Back when his country was known as East Pakistan, he served in the Pakistani air force. But one day they put him in a concentration camp on suspicion of being a spy. Long story short, we all were assigned cabs that morning and went on to toil and compete for customers on the streets of NY for more consecutive hours than your average human being can handle.