2002-11-14 10:23 a.m.
surprise!

This morning, I got on the train behind a gaggle of girls who would've looked totally at home in my old stomping grounds of North Miami.

(Background: North Miami is (or at least was when I was growing up) full of rich Jews, some nice, some not-so-much (some not-so-rich, like us). I went to elementary school with lots of girls who would grow up to lead horrible lives because their daddies didn't buy them that Audi they were promised if they passed their drivers' exam with flying colors.

All of whom, I'm sure, aren't the horrible people now that they were when they were children, but I digress.)

Up until now, their looks, their clothes, facial features, everything screamed South Florida via New York, and I've never had reason to question that classification.

Now I live in a very Jewish, fairly Russian, pretty conservative/orthodox are of Brooklyn, and here are these same girls...

except they speak in conversational Hebrew, which is littered with English words (much like listening to Japanese teenagers in the East Village).

All the while, I'm reading the first few chapters of The Jew in the Lotus, a book about the first major educational summit between Jewish leaders and the Dalai Lama in India.

Too many synchronicities.

I kick myself whenever bad, old instincts kick in: whenever my attorney from Hamburg speaks to me with an authoritative tone, whenever someone grimy is next to me on the train and my hand plants itself on top of my wallet in my pocket, whenever what looks like an East Village hipster girl strolls down the street and I simultaneously drool and want to throw up at the artificiality of people here, and whenever very old ideas of how people are/should be reemerge.

And I'm pleasantly surprised at almost every turn in this city, little moments that remind me how little of the time I know what I'm talking about. Keeps one humble and one's eyes open.

Anyone in NYC want a fairly old cat? My landlady's trying to find homes for three (aged 11, 12, and 18). Drop me a line if you do.