Iggy's New York (and my dream about a Middle-Eastern taxi driver)

The idea for this blog post came to me in a dream I had this morning:  I am in a taxi with a good-looking Middle-Eastern man who won't tell me which country he's from. He's been my driver for the past few days, and I sit in the front seat with him. I realize I'm wearing two different earrings today. One is a silver treble clef and the other is a triangular-shaped earring with an original drawing of Alice in Wonderland pasted onto it. They're both real earrings I have, but I never wear them mismatched. I tell him that the Alice earring is handmade and that I bought it years ago in Greenwich Village at an outdoor flea market back when New York City was cool. I tell him that the New York City he lives in is not the same one that existed when I used to shop at the outdoor flea markets. I say that my best friend, Ania, and I used to take the subway to the Village every Saturday and that New York City was gritty and dangerous back then. There were needles in the streets. That there were many places Ania and I would not go to even during the day.  I say that there are pockets of New York City that are dangerous these days, but back then, the pockets were everywhere. But I say that even with the danger, I still prefer the New York City of years ago. Everything was alive in those days. There was passion on the streets:  people break-dancing, playing music through their boom boxes, and no one was afraid to shout and speak their own minds.  I say that is the character that came out from the boroughs. I tell him that nowadays, New Yorkers are from Texas, Alabama, Europe, and the Middle East. I don't want to insult him, but I also want to be honest. He just listens and watches me without saying a word.

When I wake up, I realize I miss that New York. It's the same Greenwich Village I've written about in my upcoming "Iggy Gorgess" novel.  Iggy's New York takes place in the late 1980's. He hangs out with the homeless in Washington Square Park. He works at a punk clothing store where postcards of Bauhaus and all the great 1980's punk bands are displayed. He eats hot dogs on the street and doesn't care how dirty the carts are that he gets them from. That's how Manhattan was back then. People just let loose and didn't care. There was more crime back then, sure. But most of the time, people bonded together in the struggle. You didn't get reprimanded by a bystander if your voice was too loud while walking down the street. You didn't complain when you had to walk 20 blocks before you could find a public restroom. And if you were lucky enough to find one, you didn't care that it was so filthy you couldn't graze your hand against the walls or the seat.  You were just happy enough you finally found one and didn't have to hold it in on the graffiti-filled subway on the way home. You didn't expect New York to comply with your demands and to bend for you. It was New York, and you adapted to the City's ways.

Maybe that's what my dream is trying to tell me: To go with the flow of my life and grab what I can from it rather than waiting around for life to fall into place according to my particular demands and expectations.  Or maybe it's telling me that my "Iggy" novel would best be marketed to Middle Eastern taxi drivers.

Why Believing In Santa Claus Is Essential To Your Health

When it came to believing in Santa Claus, I was one of the last holdouts.  There was nothing more exciting than going to bed on Christmas Eve and waking up to find a bunch of wrapped presents under my tree that were delivered by Santa Claus and his reindeer in the middle of the night.  On the big night, we had a tradition in my family where one of my parents or my older brother would read "The Night Before Christmas" as my bedtime story.  The book had a big colorful illustration of Santa right on the cover.  Little did I know that out of the four of us, I was the only one who still actually believed that Santa really would be visiting our house in just a matter of hours exactly as the book said.

When I was in first grade, one of my classmates, Scott, told me that there wasn't any such thing as Santa Claus.  I still remember his exact words:  "You REALLY think that a fat man wearing a red suit who has a long, white beard slides down your chimney in the middle of the night to deliver you presents every Christmas? You REALLY think such a thing is possible?"  It was the middle of December, and I knew that Scott had already been getting one gift every day for several days, all leading up to the big present he would receive on Hanukkah, which didn't seem like a bad deal to me, so obviously, he didn't need to believe in Santa Claus!  He celebrated Hanukkah, and I celebrated Christmas.  Of COURSE there was such a thing as Santa Claus!

When you're a kid, you have many dreams and fantasies of how your life is going to be when you grow up, and there are many things you can believe in if you let your imagination run wild.  When I was a kid, I thought for sure I'd be a famous actress by now, living in a mansion in Hollywood.  Seems like my dream was a near impossible one, but it reminds me of that quote from "Alice in Wonderland's Through The Looking Glass" where Alice laughs at the White Queen, and says, "There's no use trying...one can't believe impossible things." The White Queen disagrees and responds: "I daresay you haven't had much practice...When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast."  Even though I no longer desire to be a Hollywood actress, I would like to believe that I got so much practice believing in things when I was a child, that I still haven't completely lost my ability to believe in impossible things.

My friend, Tara, once told me that people who are severely depressed have often lost their ability to fantasize and dream and are no longer able to lose themselves in their imagination, and that this is what ultimately leads many of them into feelings of hopelessness and despair.  It makes sense to me because when things get tough, you need to escape into an imaginary world to allow yourself some much-needed respite. If someone has lost his or her ability to escape, then the world and its problems become too much, and he or she can never escape reality or the pain of unpleasant things.  As we get older and more realistic, it becomes even more important to never lose that ability to fantasize and to believe in "impossible things."

So even if you don't believe in Santa Claus anymore and have decided against "crazy" goals such as moving to Hollywood to become a famous actress, it is still important to believe in some near impossible things, for instance, ideas that you can become "The Thinking Man's Danielle Steel" or that someday you MAY even be able to retire!  Scott will definitely be able to retire.  He is a very successful corporate attorney.  But for his sake and sanity, I REALLY hope he hasn't lost his ability to fantasize.