New York blends the gift of privacy with the excitement of participation. I am sitting at the moment in a small room in seventy degree spring weather, halfway down an air shaft, in Queens. My cat rests near the open windows and some air moves in an out of my room, but the building is quiet and still for the night. Yet I am curiously affected by the emanations from my daily surroundings. Today I walked twenty-two blocks from where Woody Allen filmed "Hannah and her Sisters." After work I took a Ballet class with a dancer who studied under Balanchine himself, and found out that one of my classmates writes for the New Yorker. Today I was thirty-six blocks away from the Empire State Building, and only two feet away from one of my favorite philosophers, Linda Alcoff, who was presenting a paper at the Society for Women in Philosophy. Just a couple of hours ago I had a beer somewhere with thinning lights in the Bowery area where bars are mirrored and chromed and the lingering traces of poetry and lamps are made out of whiskey bottles. Here people write their first novels made out of fresh memories. Circumstances of this sort become a part of one's daily routine in this city and put one at risk of feeling very small. And despite how many times I have complained about its never ending pace, there are nights like this, when I cannot imagine myself living anywhere else. Patti Smith used to write poetry for New York, and E. B White writes how "The capacity to make such dubious gifts is a mysterious quality of New York. It can destroy an individual or it can fulfill him, depending a good deal on luck." It all comes down to being able to handle privacy and participation in equal amounts. Too much participation can drive one insane in NYC, but too much privacy puts one at risk of missing out on luck, on the poetry made out of fresh memories and the grandiose ideas developed while riding crowded subways at midnight. Nobody should come to live in New York unless they are willing to be lucky.

I am repeating myself, but I must. I just finished taking a Ballet class with Sabra Perry at Ballet Academy East and frankly I cannot put any words in here to describe her strength, her giving. I watch her showing us a combination, watch her jump, and can only think of a love she has greater than I could ever contain. To me she is energy itself. Each time she smiles, I can only cry, and I think of something I read about the sadness of beauty: just to find it is not so hard, but to bear it, that is impossible. If Sabra were totally aware of the beauty and energy she was creating, she would stop in awe of herself. She somehow makes life so much more than it is and then – well, I am absolutely at a loss.

Philosophy/ Food

Back in North Carolina, my roommate and best friend Elizabeth used to love reading books about Zodiac Signs. I never took those horoscopes very seriously, not because of skepticism, but rather because of a biographical fact that conditioned me to disbelieve in the Zodiac. My mother used to be a journalist back in Argentina, and one of her first jobs was to make up the fictional predictions in the horoscope section of the newspaper. After learning what happened behind the scenes of horoscope writing, I was unable to take the zodiac predictions seriously.
But Liz did owe a funny book about signs which she read to me one evening. The title of the chapter was “How to deal with a Taurus Roommate.” I was her Taurus roommate. One of the things she read to me was that: “The Taurus roommate likes to keep to herself, and usually stays in her room unless bribed with food.” This detail did seem to match my personality because, as far as I can remember, I have usually kept to myself when I live with other people, but I do come out of my room when I know that people are making food, or sharing food, or having a pot luck in my house, etc.

This is all to say that I joined the Society for Women in Philosophy here in NYC. We meet once a month at NYU to discuss papers and hold each other accountable for our writing goals. But if you really want to know the real reason why I joined, and the reason that motivates me to leave my house on Thursday evenings, is the food. Yes, we can sign up to bring food and drinks, and before presenting papers there is a pot luck with lots of really good food. I am making a couscous salad for the next get together, and I’m already excited about trying different plates of food…It must be a Taurus thing.