The Spontaneous Moment [Miami]

It's hard for me to find an angle from which to approach my recent visit to Miami -- not only because I can't imagine a city more different from Philadelphia, or even London, but because the contrast extended to my time spent there, my own private/public divide. The sprawling highways, the neon and Art Deco high rises, the constant presence of luxury cars never felt palpable, even when viewed from the street and not through the windshield of my friend's Thunderbird. And yet back at her apartment complex, I felt myself imposing the other side of the cliche, a sort of Southern hospitality in the casual formality of neighbors' greetings ('Hello ladies, y'all have a good day'), and a hazy resignation in the willows bending over the canal behind the building.

This is what happens when you visit a city for not even three days; it becomes the living version of your preconceptions. This was the case for Amsterdam as well, which I remember as the cold still water of its brick-lined canals and the velvet air of its coffee shops, with a few museums thrown in for good measure. In the end Rotterdam gave me a more personal view of the Netherlands, because of my limited conception of its landscape before I arrived. I imagine another city or town in Florida would have the same effect, balancing the mind's postcard-picture that Miami helped me to build.

In a hostel somewhere near Canberra, Australia, I picked up a book called The Intelligent Tourist -- I have long since put it down, somewhere equally random, and so my recollection of it is vague at best. The author, a highly educated academe of some sort, wrote with the purpose of opening the reader's eyes to the 'proper' way to travel: research an area before you arrive, learn about the local history and politics, become familiar with the literature (and the language, even in a basic sense). This knowledge should allow the educated traveler to veer off the highways of tourist traffic and explore some 'little-known gems', thus bolstering the cultural value of the journey. To varying degrees I've tried to follow his directions, as they're easy enough for any bookworm, even if in some ways they impose another kind of tunnel vision, preventing spontaneity and surprise -- but in fact most of the time I travel with an able guide, and often allow their interests to frame my view.

So, I could easily list an inventory of objects/experiences accrued during my brief stay:

~1 banana margarita
~1 hour browsing at independent bookstore (Books and Books in Coral Gables)
~1 museum visit (MOCA)
~1 bathroom stop at a swanky hotel (The Biltmore)

Etc. But that's what diaries are for. Instead I'd rather focus on that spontaneous moment that, happily, closed my visit. Having a last beer in the mild weather on J.'s balcony, I was startled out of my lethargy when she jumped out of her chair, shouting about manatees. We'd heard they made appearances in the canal, but in five months she'd never seen any, so I hadn't counted on it. But as we peered into the still, brackish water we could make out a grayish shape moseying its way into view.

This is that tricky moment -- the moment when cliche beckons again, in phrases like 'childlike wonder', 'magic creature'. Perhaps I can take a lesson from William Carlos Williams and state it plainly: We ran down to the dock after calling another friend, who joined us. We fed the manatee freshwater from a hose left there for that purpose, with some help from a more experienced neighbor who directed us in a housedress from her balcony. We threw bagged lettuce into the water, which the manatee nosed without much interest. Its mouth was like the mouth of a cow, big nostrils (and skin flaps, like eyelids, to cover them!) and whiskers. You could feel the pressure in the hose as it sucked down the water. My friend J. snapped a photo. I finished my beer and went to the airport.

Above and Below

Growing up, I always thought of my city as a kind of delightful mish-mash of religious, ethnic, even socio-economic groups. This is mainly due to my attending public school, which, because of integrative busing at the elementary level, and the presence of 'magnet' schools (competitive schools which teens from all over the city could attend) at the secondary level, allowed me the privilege of asking a lot of potentially obnoxious questions (i.e., 'What's that scarf on your head?') at an age when other people are more inclined to answer one's questions than get offended by curiosity.

Living in Pittsburgh was a very different affair; my university was/is a mainly white campus, and although minority groups were active and there was no outright hostility, the 'separate lunch table' self-segregation definitely operated on the social scene. After four years there, London's diversity felt invigorating. I found myself living in a neighborhood with large Middle Eastern and Polish populations, and a short Tube ride away from any number of excellent exhibitions, retrospectives of the Great Masters alongside intelligent and informed surveys of the art and history of so-called developing countries. (This is not to say the selection process cannot itself be problematic -- take the Tate Modern's retrospective this past summer of Frida Kahlo, for example, whose renown over other Mexican artists stems as much from her sensational life and recent titillating biopic, as for her deft and unique mixture of folkloric and 'classical' techniques. Yet for those interested in alternative traditions within art, such a large and well-known space as the Tate provides a starting point, a place for awareness to begin.)

After three months back in my hometown, I see clearly that I'd mistaken my small, friendly 'melting pot' years at public school for the attitude of a city at large. These days I work in a predominantly Latino neighborhood at the edge of North Philadelphia, an area I knew only by name in childhood, and not for anything particularly desirable. And while I may stick to the main thoroughfares walking to the subway every night, I feel as much -- if not more -- of a sense of community as I do in my own neighborhood, a decidedly well-off area in the northwest part of the city. On the blocks where I self-consciously walk alone, families wander in and out of each other's houses, say hello to everyone who walks by, and on each block gather for conversation on a chosen stoop any time the winter temperatures rise a few degrees. Just before the holidays, I left the building where I work only to see two young teens egging on their adolescent pit bulls in a fight, letting the dogs grab hold of each other and then wrenching them apart, laughing at the animals' frenzied reaction. Shaken, I turned the corner -- only to see two elderly women, next door neighbors, helping each other to put up their Christmas lights.

By sharing this contrast I don't intend to imply anything other than my own blindness to a whole area of the city that I apparently 'knew by heart'. After all, why would people who don't live in this neighborhood bother to come here? They'll only find a handful of restaurants, many of which charge extortionist prices for a sit-down meal; check-cashing joints; auto repair shops; and vacant lots and condemned buildings. Not until the young and educated (known as 'hipsters' these days, not nearly as ironically as they'd like to imagine) exhaust their gentrification of the neighborhood Fishtown, farther south, will Philadelphia take a second look at this neighborhood. Until then, it doesn't really exist except on the news.

These realizations and frustrations are typical -- anyone coming from a relatively privileged background upon their initiation into social work must have them at one point or another. But with the federal holiday in honor of Dr. King next Monday, and Black History Month and Presidents' Day in February, I can't stop thinking about the boundaries that are in place -- the invisible lines we don't cross, which make the self-assigned segregation of a lunchroom seem both paltry and a sad indication of a pattern. And the city won't let me stop thinking about it. On Saturday I attended a function at the Union League, a 'patriotic social society' formed in 1862 that occupies an elegant brick and brownstone building on Broad Street near City Hall. Upon entry, I was held in the foyer by a security guard, a middle-aged Nigerian immigrant who insisted that I couldn't go further due to my 'improper attire' -- a pair of jeans. As my invitation had failed to indicate a dress code, and as my knowledge of high-society Philadelphia is in fact quite limited, I had no idea that my 'dressy jeans' would cause offense to elderly gentlemen gathered for brandy and cigars. It took the 'okay' of three managers before the guard felt sure his position wouldn't be jeopardized by making an exception, which leads me to believed that he's seen others fired for much less. Once upstairs in the Grand Ballroom, I found myself reading the Gettysburg Address, carved into one of the high oak walls, while a fellow guest gossipped that in fact women, blacks and Jews had not been allowed in the Union League until the 1980s. And this in a society 'founded to support the policies of President Lincoln'.

The next day, in a train station two blocks away from that stately instituion, I found myself gazing blankly at the neon advertisements for a new biography of Lincolnsoon to be aired on the History Channel. 'He freed four million people. But he could never free himself', read one of the slogans. Pop psychology strikes again, shrinking a monumental historical event down to one man's neuroses. Above or below the streets of Philly, our history, our awareness is always being shaped around a delicate periphery. It's easier to skirt the edges of a comfort zone than to ever truly leave it. I am amazed to find this city cold to me, fossilized, a sharp veneer surface draped artfully over so many assumptions. I have been discouraged following de Maistre's footsteps. It's time for this chapter of 'home travel' to end.