Another Country -- novel research

[susanstinson]

Last weekend, I ate abundant food from Zabar's in New York City on a bench with beccawrites – honey crusted salmon and tiny pickles and olives, babka and two cheeses with crisps of bread that sustained me when I almost missed my bus home and had to hop over fake velvet ropes at Port Authority and pound on closed doors and wave the driver back to the curb, and so arrived aboard for the four hour trip, dishelleved, hungry, without water, and needing to pee. But Peter Pan buses have bathrooms, a tight fit for me, but okay.

And, I did, I still had that cheese from Zabar's -- which I, in my ignorance, had not heard of before -- where we also witnessed lobster tails, champagne ham, and received free samples of jalapeno polish sausage, smoked salmon, and yet another cheese. I ate it on the bus, wrote a letter, and watched the leaves get brighter as we got closer to home.

beccawrites is delicious, smart and fun, and she looked like a mighty force hurrying across Penn Station to meet me under the big sign, where other women named Susan had been greeted, hugged and also (one from Florida) fruitlessly sought for as I waited.

Then I met Paul at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, and his face was so beautiful, lit up – he was coming off a morning of great writing, when he had been expecting complicated technical problems, but it all came together – made a container, he said – so it was inspiring just to be around him – plus, he's a sweetie. To go to the bathroom at the cathedral, one has to go through the beautiful sanctuary with its unexpected niches and odd sweetness, then outside the building to these weird trailers, and there were these pedals to push with your feet – right for water, left to flush, but did they mean stage right? – I had to study the directions – it was like going to another country.

Comments

[purejuice.livejournal.com]

new york really is heavenly. so is riding the bus. glad you had a good time.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

thanks, juice. Have you ever read catelin? She's just posted something wonderful about the day of the dead, caramel, and her ghosts that I think you would like.

[beatgoddess.livejournal.com]

Jalapeno Polish sausage? Mon dieu!

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I know! Such adventurousness!

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

I love that Cathedral, I used to go to church there every Sunday even though I am an atheist, and light a candle at the intersection of two writer's I loved in the poet's bay, and have my eyes well up with tears when we sang. Did you take the vertical tour? They take you all the way up inside the walls. I couldn't cross the iron catwalk over the vaulted ceiling, and had to come back down alone, but even still, it was worth it.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

I loved the poet's corner, and the huge hunk of quartz, so much of the art, and both the solemnity and quirkiness of the shrines and places of mourning. I didn't take a tour (oo, vertical! catwalk! don't know if I could do it, either, but the idea is fabulous), because I was there to see a performance of a monologue, The Flaming Spider, based on the life of Jonathan Edwards -- I'm writing a novel about him.

What two writers did you light your candle for? Unless that's private...

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Quirky and solemn is it exactly! I first went for a multi-denominational memorial for murdered abortion doctors, and got hooked. Not many cathedrals have a tightrope walker in residence, or do all night readings of the Inferno on Halloween (and sometimes monster movies with organ accompaniment, giant puppets, and dry ice. And bless the elephants from the circus) and yet still have that kind of gravitas that feels like the best of human aspiration has soaked into the stones. I even tried to become a Christian for that place, but it just didn't take. It was the people I believed in, not the god.

It's not private, I just don't remember. *g* Or rather, I remember it as Wallace Stevens and TS Eliot, but I don't quite see how Eliot would be there given that it's supposed to be American writers, and I can't find a list online to confirm or deny. If I were to go today Millay would get a look in, but she was added after I moved downtown.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

T.S. Eliot is definitely there -- I remember seeing his name -- and he was born in the U.S., of course. I particularly touched to see Theodore Roethke, a poet I truly love who doesn't seem to be widely read now. There were fiction writers, too -- Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, Edith Wharton -- can't remember who else.

The all night readings from the Inferno sound amazing -- the whole thing does -- and it's very interesting to me that the place and the people you found there drew you to try to become a Christian, before you found that it wasn't the god that you wanted.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Ah, I forgot about him being born here. I always think of him as British, because his stuff seems so rooted in London to me.

It was a really neat cathedral. So life affirming, but not in a flaky way. Full of cool stuff to do and seeing no reason not to do as much of it as they could cram in, but having enough tradition to give that sense of connection to permanence that alternative stuff often doesn't.

The funny thing is, I barely knew the people. It's not like I was going to pot lucks and Bible study and making friends. But they were cool from a distance. And part of what appealed to me about it was that distance was possible. The liminality of it -- because of the tourists and the outside activities, you could be welcome without being wholly a part of it, you could hover in the doorway in a way that not many religious communities have space for. Since that seems to be my default stance, I appreciate a comfy vestibule.

Of course, the other part of me trying to be a Christian is that as a Jew with a narcissistic father, it occured to me that having a way to relate to god other than as a father (and other than as angry, jealous, arbitrary, and needing to be flattered), might work better. It still didn't, but I'm glad I tried it, because it allowed me to separate resentment from simple unbelief.

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Liminality is a lovely thing -- I appreciate a comfy vestibule, myself.

I wrote a little about what I've been thinking about god on the bus ride home from NYC (doing church-related research and writing about a preacher is bringing it up for me). I've been slow to bring it up for various reasons, but your interesting posts are making me consider putting some version of it up here.

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Obviously don't post if you're not comfortable, but if you do decide to, I'd be interested to read it.

Jonathon Edwards

[auntysocial.livejournal.com]

I can't wait to see what you write about Jonathon Edwards. I don't know much about him, but a high school teacher read us "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God," and I thought it was incredibly depressing. How did you choose him as a subject?

Re: Jonathon Edwards

[susanstinson.livejournal.com]

Geographic common ground, following contemporary US attitudes about the body to a source, interest in exploring the nature and impact of religious fundamentalism within my own culture, and the discovery of his Shakespearean life story and the unexpected, unresolved, haunting aspects of his impassioned, stringent, problemmatic and powerful writing