Hogs and heifers

Completely without irony, the pork loin sandwich stand at the Wayne County Fair in Ohio was next to the 4-H Swine barn. [Although I grew up in Wayne County, I never quite understood the difference between "pigs," "hogs," and "swine." There must be some technical differentiation that escapes me.] In any case, the Swine barn was filled with immaculately groomed pink pigs, rapturously sleeping in their pens. It was around 9 p.m., and the fair was still going strong; along the fairway, the kids were being swung around in hurl-inducing rides, the blue-pink cotton candy was still spinning, and the food carts were still pumping out sausage sandwiches, deep-fried onion flowers, and something called a walking taco, which involved putting toppings into a bag of Doritos sliced open on its side. [Sadly, I'm not making that up.]

In three days, all those market hogs, aged six months, would be sold at auction and most likely slaughtered. For the eight days they lived at the fair, they lived like the castrated young kings they were: lovingly bathed an brushed, sleeping on beds of sawdust, eating buckets of special feed that packed on the pounds. Most of them were four feet long and around 300 pounds, which is a lot of pig: about fifty pounds every six months. But this has never been the Manhattan-imagined version of organic eating, which magically occurs in a bloodless, dirtless world in which no one ever breaks a sweat or gets any shit on their Louboutins. I once wrote in an essay that the simple country life factored out always ends in death, and that's pretty much the truth. The grilled pork loin sandwiches served at the stand right outside the Swine barn were sublime: fresh, tender, juicy, and mighty tasty. And it was completely without irony that all of us admired those nice pigs and then would chow down on their brethren not twenty steps away, topped with bright red rounds of beefsteak tomatoes and a little salt and pepper. Praise the lord and pass the BBQ sauce.

Unlike a lot of things, the Wayne County Fair of my childhood has not changed. If anything, it's bigger, more vivid, and more amazing. The tractors have only grown in size, cost a quarter of a million dollars or more, and have mp3 player docks; they already had air conditioning twenty-five years ago. The rides weren't the rinky-dink merry-go-rounds like the kind set up in parking lots, but the real McCoy--with flashing colored lights and contraptions with no foot rests that flung people up and around through the air right over the propane gas vendor booth. If anything, this was the vigorous, prosperous heartland of America beloved by politicians nearly everywhere: white, Christian, hard-working, and carnivorous. This is the land of the giant pumpkin and the prize-winning stallion standing at stud.

It's also about as different as can possibly be from my current daily routine: packed subways, city grit, and vendors in greenmarkets selling wheatgrass. I work literally across the street from the United Nations and all its attendant bureaucrats, many in native dress, and actually occasionally buying a precious yellow heirloom tomato at peak season for five dollars a pound.

And yet, somehow, it all makes sense.

Once neighbors in Williamsburg

When I lived in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, I had a loft space on the top floor of a white concrete warehouse building. The view of the Manhattan skyline was spectacular; my roommate and I could see the weather changing, coming in from Jersey--so that even though we were in the city, it felt like we were in the wilderness somewhere. Someplace where one's relationship to sun and rain and storms was far more intimate than might be expected for urban life. For the first six years or so, we didn't have heat during non-business hours. 

The building was filled with different kind of factories: on one floor, the Hasidic guys made belts; one day, they loaded too much leather into the freight elevator and broke it. On another floor, different guys made picture frames. Puerto Ricans sorted used clothing and shipped out bales from the basement and ground floor. Across the street, Chinese guys ran a kitchen fabricating company, making stainless steel tables and sinks and stoves. I never let on that I understood what they were saying, even if it wasn't that interesting.

During my last year in Williamsburg, I became friends with a woman who was in treatment for ovarian cancer. She had survived breast cancer about six years previously. I knew her from the meditation center in the city where we both volunteered. When I found out she only lived ten blocks from me or so, I figured I could help out. I picked up her lemon-lime Gatorade, bottled water, and some cole slaw from the deli at the supermarket. Her ability to eat was limited on chemo. I did her laundry and helped change her sheets. I read to her from my novel. When she got stronger, we talked. About art, books, her family. Mine. I moved to Queens, but we stayed in touch, mostly by phone.

She left a message the other day. She's back in the hospital, perhaps with brain cancer. They did a biopsy on Labor Day, removing a section of her skull and taking a sample of brain tissue; there is a mass 4 cm in size in the lower left portion, an unwelcome intruder whatever its exact composition. The doctors are going to begin radiation treatment anyway, before the test results are finalized. When I spoke to her on the phone today, she seemed surprised that the doctors were going to release her any day now. But an email exchange with a mutual friend indicated something different, about a long stay in "acute rehab," which is kind of funny and ironic for a recovering alcoholic. She complains about Williamsburg a lot--its annoying hipster quality, the faux hardships of the privileged young. But I wonder what she's thinking about Williamsburg now that she's not there. The quality of place changes when we're away, and even more so if we can't go back.

Glass house

When you live across from a glass house, you know far less than you think you do. And when you're in the glass house next door, you probably let on far more than you realize. Crumbs on your face. Rubbing your nose. Staring out at the pink-lavendar sun sinking into New Jersey like a smelter on fire.

I don't live in a glass house. I just have a side job for someone who does, at 165 Charles Street. Once a week I come here to pay bills in the evening. When you're inside the apartment, it's rather an optical illusion; you feel like you're cantilevered right over the West Side Highway and that, if you stepped out onto the balcony, you could walk right into the river.

So it's a strange sensation. To be in a house where I can see everyone around me through their floor-to-ceiling windows [though it usually seems that people who can afford to live in glass houses are seldom actually there]. To be so utterly revealed and, simultaneously, be under the complete illusion that I am utterly alone. Just me and the yellow lab at my feet. I can look across the street and see right into someone's kitchen. Watch the whole family walk around, setting a table for dinner, corraling a series of children, and chatting away. After the dishes are cleared away, the dad--always in a white T-shirt and black running pants--goes to sit at a desk and tap away at a computer, his face lit in the glow of a lamp just like mine. Though, chances are, he owns his lamp. I am merely the interloper. The hired help. If I were carrying anything heavier than my handbag, I'd be using the service entrance.

But today, after night has fallen, there's no light around except for the one I'm standing in; no one else is indoors. There's a twinkling of lights across the Hudson, the moving glow of a vessle gliding on the water, the hot-white-holy pillar of the Empire State Building that looks so close I could touch it. Maybe when you're in a glass house, it's easiest to think that you're the only person at all in the city--and that it's all for you.