Providence

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Providence,_Rhode_Island

The city of Providence was in pretty bad shape during my time attending the Rhode Island School of Design. Downtown was a workplace for the suburban 9-to-5-Monday-through-Friday set, abandoned to junkies and the homeless people on the weekends, like a ghost town. There were no stores open or attractions to see, other than a small mall built inside of a beautiful old building with an ornate glass ceiling. Surrounding the town was a large concrete sewer that reduced the river to a dirty little stream filled with garbage.

College Hill was a bastion of old houses and historic cobblestone streets by comparison, so the lack of any type of inviting nightlife (save for the one music venue we all frequented for discount tickets to traveling punk acts on their way from New York to Boston) actually spared us from a lot of the violent random crimes that plagued less savvy college kids. Occasionally we went to the Italian section on the other hill facing downtown for big spaghetti dinners, to be greeted by an archway hung with a copper pineapple for its guests, a sure sign of a paisan good time.

The misty narrow streets once haunted by the likes of Edgar Allen Poe were still as captivating to young artistic imaginations as ever, easy as the old scenes were at blurring the lines between then and now, in the dense fogs that would descend upon the town, blown inland from the sea. The air would become thick with moisture, salty and briny as the ocean, as every Northeastern city does. Anyway, the hill held enough for us to explore. The main drag at the top of the hill in our college district had cheap eats, like the vegan-approved falafel joint I went to with my hippie housemates that inspired me and my friend Dave to coin the phrase "The Falafel Mafia!" yelled out loud in an Arabic-sounding voice. 

We wanted to make t-shirts for our next punk band that would have one really bad performance before folding forever. Screeching is tough on the vocal chords! It wasn't until years later in Denver that I met a Portuguese/Italian guy from Massachusetts also living out west, who told me about the wackier side of town. He asked me if I knew a big decorative element downtown, and then I remembered. Oh, yeah! There was a building like New York's Flatiron skyscraper: narrow to a point, to fill out two bigger corners in a triangle-shape. "Right," my friend Chris said to me while we worked at The Denver Post. "It's evil." Uh...okay. Why? This should be good.

Chris had some traumas growing up that he felt pushed him into evangelical Christianity, trading his sex addiction for the headier blend of this weird-ass new age cult that flourished in the midwest during the 80s and 90s. It was the time of the "SuperChurch" with its strange crystal palaces and homosexual pastors who always seemed to be caught with illegal drugs and a hooker. My work friend was now a passionately ignorant "Born-Again", which was made doubly weird by his self-professed Catholic upbringing. The arid plains out west can do strange things to some people. 

Still, it was far better than dying from an overdose, so I tolerated his blowhard lecturing about my own faith as good-naturedly as I could, without letting him cross the line into offensiveness. I already knew who I was. Did he? I wasn't so sure. People with mental problems get confused easily. Chris had lived in Arizona with his divorced mom after they left the Northeast years ago, and even though Denver throws down some serious snow, homeboy continued to wear linen pants and a thin golf jacket like he was driving a golf cart around his retirement community. His brain wasn't catching up to the change in locale. 

Like office people everywhere, Chris preferred fanatsies about tropical beaches, grumbling about the weather while planning his next bad tourist vacation that would put him right back on the work-wheel he loathed so much. But, back to the story. So, what's wrong with that building's sculpture? It was a stone carving of a guy in a turban that faced people who came into town down a certain block. Oh, the genie is an evil symbol designed to be a focal point that draws in bad magic. Sigh...really? I don't think the oldest Ivy League schools in American give two fucks, other than its aesthetic appeal. Didn't stop us from doin' a damn thing.

He gave me that special kind of smiley condescension that marks the kook who's just been exposed. Turns out, Chris recruited another wack-job from his mega church to go on "hunting trips" that would neutralize evil hotspots. Ah, what the fuck...I'll bite. It was an office job, after all. What else was I gonna do at a plush union gig besides crossword puzzles and free music downloads? Well, first he lightly chastized me for my naivety about the creepy-crawly things I didn't know. Right. Yeah. So, the genie? Right! Well, you're supposed to counter its dark forces by staking out the four corners of a cemetery resting on a hill before town with a magical string that keeps the evil graveyard spirits from entering. 

That's what he and his brain-dead friend were doing with Denver (and it had to be done at midnight, too), and that's what I should have done for Providence. Uh huh. Besides the three jobs and all that art? Yes! Okay, neat. Thanks for that. In any event, I'm happy to report that my lapse in good judgment about crazy rituals did not hurt it one bit. In fact, after I left the city, great changes were already taking place. They removed the concrete blocks that held back the river, building a beautiful outdoor riverwalk that ended in an amphitheater for concerts and plays. A gondola boat gave tourists rides up-and-down the canal like Venice, with charming lights illuminating the scene at sunset. 
Not a bad ending after all, is it? 

Born Agains

I knew two religions growing up: Judaism and Catholicism. One of the Rockland County-born boys (who'd later challenge me to a fight after school one day) said he was "Christian" when we asked around at lunchtime, which started a conversation about what exactly that was. We figured out in the fourth grade that a "Christian" is someone who believes in Jesus Christ, because the word "Christ" is in it. I remember it because the doors to the cafeteria were open, and the weather was warm. I even remember some of the kids at lunch: Molly, Vinny, Michael, me, and a few others. We were all Catholic except for Michael; a Gerlach with Dutch/German roots, whose family did not like the "ethnic" people moving up from the city during the 70s.

During my post-college career, my fiance/husband chafed under the conditions that New York City imposes upon the individual. He was struggling, and he needed my help. I knew a change of scenery wouldn't cure his alcoholism and manic-depression, but I was up for an adventure. My career and my hometown would still be there when I got back, and I knew that, too, despite a former classmate's prediction that I was committing "career suicide" by leaving New York. I didn't actually believe in my impending suicide, though, so we made the move out west to Colorado, anyway.

I'd never been to Colorado before, but I'd seen enough pictures and done enough research to have an idea of what was there. That, and I already scheduled an interview. We reached Boulder at night, and the hotel room looked like anywhere. The next day, we woke up to a blizzard with lots of snow, which I liked. I love the mountains, having grown up near the Adirondacks and the Catskills; hiking, camping, and exploring rural New York. I discovered during college that my genetically thick skin was still intact after that first winter in Oneonta: a city in the hills, where winter begins in October and ends in May.

After a bout of altitude sickness, I adjusted quickly, as is my way. Culture is another story. It's very different from New York, as anyone who's ever been to both places can attest to. Within a week, David found carpentry work that was easy to find during the town's construction boom. My work? Not so easy. It took me six months to get an excellent freelance position at a museum, which launched my career there. During that time, I got a lot of flack from both sides of my family, even though I lived off my savings and paid all of my bills on my own, without my husband's help. I am the first professional working artist in my family, and the time frames are different. It's slow and hard to find, but the work is exciting and challenging. It's worth it.

Of course, there are a lot of other differences than just geography: the weather, the people, the food, etc., but the first real bristling always happens at an office, where people brush up against one another. Needless, the women I encountered at my first job didn't like me, so I moved on. The excuses were the same as New York, though: the hemming and the hawing, the awkward avoidance in hallways, the gossip and the sniping....how....human. The next job was a fun, frat-like, all-male recording studio. It was filled with emigrés who couldn't tolerate the East Coast lifestyle, like my then-husband, but I wasn't bent on recreating myself into a mythic Western ideal like they were. I had an identity already, and from an early age. Part of the secret handshake of that world, I learned, was a disavowal of one's past life, with fretful hand-wringing about my time in New York. There's even lingo devoted to it; a sub-culture of hatred, envy, and regret, for "escaping" from New York. I was barred entry for not performing my lines correctly.

Another bout, this one with severe flu, no health insurance, and my husband's arrest, brought about some quick changes. My marriage was over, I had no health plan, and I was alone. So, I got a corporate gig with regular benefits and "stability", though I know those aren't real, either. I was part of a design group within a large company that went bust. Working right next to me was a woman who'd gone to my high school. She was immediately freaked out by me because she'd hoped to be a pioneer out west, cobbling together a "fun" identity borrowed mostly from Seinfeld episodes. My appearance blew her cover and her routine, which made her skittish and uncertain around me. Naturally, she wanted to be my "friend", which is called a "frenemy" nowadays. She hadn't lived in "New Yawk" since high school, and I threw her off because I wasn't serving up Brooklyn cliches just for entertainment. She was also the only practicing Catholic I knew out there.

We had a mostly Colorado work group, people who alternately avoided me and competed with me, which I expected. They feared and disliked me, making an uneven peace with my presence through an avoidance that they played off as their folksy, country reticence. The other out-of-towner was an unfortunate transplant who shivered all winter long in his resort-wear from Arizona. No amount of talking could persuade him to buy a coat, a scarf, gloves, or a hat. He had a large poster of a tropical palm tree in his pen, which shouted out his climate preferences to anyone who passed by. We got along well, though, as outsiders. He's a devout Christian and a wayward soul, wandering among the scriptures like a beach-comber looking for treasure. He doesn't quite get it, but he loves to talk about it. 

During another slow union-funded afternoon, he made the mistake of handing out religious pamphlets at work. I felt an obligation to tell him the truth, albeit discreetly, that he was breaking the law. He's originally from Mass., so I used that as a reference point, guiding him along as gently as I could. He wouldn't do that if he was in New York, would he? What if he handed this to an Atheist or a Jew?! It's not only offensive, he could lose his job over religious solicitation during office hours. He had the fire of a new convert, but it was also extremely condescending to anyone with a serious religious background. As a Catholic, my parents and family had introduced me to our ancient faith before I could speak. These spiritual concepts were not new to me.

Years earlier, my then-fianceé and I lived in my aunt's old apartment to save money for our wedding and moving expenses. I often went to other neighborhoods to shop and run errands they weren't available to me in the Kensington section of Brooklyn. I don't often take the bus, because I prefer to walk within distance, so I usually take the subway for further trips. I took the bus one time, a real rarity for me, and I was delighted when a normal-looking young woman asked if she could sit down next to me. Oh, good! I lost touch with a lot of female friends during the post-graduation phase of my life, and I welcomed an opportunity to make a new one. She was an average white woman, clean, neat in appearence with straight brown hair. She asked me a few questions to break the ice, or so I thought. Wow, friendly, too...nice!

Then, she dropped the "freak" bomb. She became chirpy and glassy-eyed, a little too keen to talk, speaking much quicker than before. "Me and a group of friends like to meet every Wednesday." Okay...."Would you like to come by?" Uh, what for? Shit. Too late. "Have you accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as Your Savior?" Yeah, and a long time ago, too. Welcome to the club.There's no gift basket, by the way. Since then, whenever I'm approached by a zealot, I just blurt out "I'm Catholic!", which seems to frighten them off right away. And, yes, I also carry an "I'm Catholic" card in my wallet.  

Blessings to you and yours this week.