October in New York City

Tripping down Memory Lane - will you come along?

Aloha, not from the island of Moku o Keawe from which I usually write, but from the island of Manahatta, once home of the Lenape.

It feels so awkward to write those words. The land acknowledgement is a recent tradition, a phrase recited at the opening a conference or found on an organizationʻs “About Page,” naming the people whose land was stolen. As my newly found Voice urges me to speak from the unique and sometimes confused but not entirely incoherent perspective that is mine, I confess I am ambivalent about the practice of land acknowledgement. And yet I am here to retrace footsteps of my own past self and I canʻt help but be cognizant, as I am every day in my chosen home, that I walk on pathways walked by ancestors of people who live today, and who not by choice live elsewhere than where their ancestors walked.

Sorry/not sorry if that phrase “whose land was stolen” offends.

Put more diplomatically, as it says on the home page of the Whitney Museum, one of the few cultural venues I plan to visit this week:

The Whitney is located in Lenapehoking, the ancestral homeland of the Lenape. The name Manhattan comes from their word Mannahatta, meaning “island of many hills.” The Museum’s current site is close to land that was a Lenape fishing and planting site called Sapokanikan (tobacco field). The Whitney acknowledges the displacement of this region’s original inhabitants and the Lenape diaspora that exists today.

Let me relieve the tension by pausing for a commercial break:

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The cobblestones of Franklin Street where hundreds of weekly Sunday night dinners at Riverrun (b.1978-d.2015) live in my memory.

OK, to tell the truth I wrote this in advance, so as these words come onto the screen I can look out my window towards the island of Maui, my gaze falling very close to the place known as Nuʻu that I wrote about last week. I really donʻt plan to do any writing during the short five day visit to Manahatta, so here I am projecting into the future as if I was there/here already. Perhaps I will add to the story in the comments below while I actually am walking the land of the Lenape.

Meanwhile, let me reorient you in the history of my personal story as it intersects with that Place and others. Those of you who read the episodes of my life from 1992 to 1997¹ will recall that period began with me resident in the West Village of Modern Manhattan at 16 St Lukes Place, then splitting my time between my NYC apartment and the Jardins district of São Paulo, before traveling on a great American road trip and finally crossing the Pacific to Oʻahu and Maui.

I returned to lower Manhattan in 1997 and stayed on the East Coast for another eight years before moving permanently back to Hawaiʻi.

Perhaps visiting New York City for a whirlwind five-day trip is not what most people would think of as a relaxing vacation. For me, the City is a place of ease, a familiar home despite all its changes. The subway map in my brain is intact, requiring little effort to decide which line to take, whether the nearest stop to the destination will require a local train, and approximately how much time I should allow. I have had other visits to adapt to changes in the landscape of lower Manhattan since I last lived here. My familiar walking routes now recognize the existence of the Highline and Hudson River Park. The reconfigured Financial District anchored by the 9-11 Memorial no longer confuses me.

I like to stay downtown, near the various places I lived and worked. The moment I started looking at hotels online, those ubiquitous ads pushed options at me. The 33 Hotel at South Street Seaport looked so tempting. But some uneasy feeling in my stomach would not let me push the “make a reservation” button. I finally figured out it was just too close to where I woke up on the morning of September 11, 2001. I had stayed overnight in an apartment in the building by the Seaport that Trinity Church owned (maybe still owns) where one floor had accommodations for visiting guests and consultants like me. Even after 23 years apparently it is too soon for me to retrace my steps from that day.

I finally settled on a newish boutique hotel in Tribeca - very close to the loft my hanai daughters and I sublet in the fall of 1997. Those are steps I will happily retrace.

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The fall months, especially in New York City, carry so many memories. They carry so many enduring connections to people and experiences featured here in They Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir. The fall months also seem to be the birthday months of the majority of the significant people in my life, all those Scorpios whose intensity matches my Aries Fire Monkey persona, and all those Libras I seek out to balance my fire. On October 29th I will find a moment to raise a glass to Velvalee (who is no longer bodily with us) and Nelsinho (who will celebrate his 80th birthday, presumably with his 30-year younger namorada). As I recounted in this episode of my memoir about the Birthday Twins, during the year leading up to their 50th birthday Velvalee was residing with me on St Lukes Place which was ok because most nights I was at Nelsonʻs apartment. Fitting that I should be in Manhattan for their 80th.

My Brilliant Big Brother Best Man Carman Moore turned 88 earlier this month. And the day before that my eldest goddaughter celebrated her birthday. Another reason for this trip is to meet her son, born earlier this year. There should be a familial term to describe the first born of oneʻs first godchild. When her mother texted me an uncaptioned sonogram image I shrieked out loud “My baby is having a baby!” The English language reflects the paucity of relationship options in our nuclear family-driven culture. In every way that matters, the people I travel nine hours, and nearly 5,000 miles, to see are my family.

I traveled so many miles and so many places in the 1992-1997 portion of The Keep Telling Me I Should Write My Memoir, reveling in the new experiences. In contrast, at this stage of my life I find myself content leaning in to the people and places that matter the most, bucket list forgotten on a scrap of paper buried in one of the boxes stored in the barn that still waits to be renovated. Perhaps, like the journals kept in my late childhood and young adulthood, my bucket list will be shredded and nested in by rodents, never again to be read, barely missed.

Will there will be reason to empty the bucket and fill it with new dreams? I believe there will be new Places in my future, but as relationships not acquisitions or conquests. So no, I dream only of deepening connections to the people and places I love while being open to the path I walk and those I encounter on it.

See you back in the ahupuaʻa of Awalua next week.

1. They are gathered under this tab but I canʻt figure out how to sort them in chronological order so I put a number next to each one.