What's in a Name

Pathmark 125th Street has long joined the ranks of  discarded NYC institutions now--the site under transformation into an enormous residential and retail development.  For me, embracing designated economic poverty as an older adult, it was a reality-experience.  The simple enormity of the space at this location, unlike the crowded Manhattan supermarkets with narrow aisles and limited wares, was spectacular for someone like me who,  excepting road-trip stops,  was under-exposed to mall-shopping.  I visited Pathmark for the sales, the availability, the simple 'gift' of space... the late-night hours, proximity to subway.  Where else could I score a decent fresh turkey for 69 cents a pound?  The scams, the schemes of visiting regulars-- the simple neighborhood habits of those who brought folding chairs and sat basking in the generous 'lobby' air conditioning in summer-- the recycling, the socializing and innocent panhandling...  all part of the past 'innocence' of New York.

Finding bargains these days and living on food stamps is a challenge.  Last week I was in one of my current preferred grocery destinations in Harlem, and I heard a woman yelling... 'Princeton!' with more and more conviction.  So I turned-- yes, there those old days when some random boyfriend or bandmate would refer to me sarcastically by my alma-mater and like 'Mom' which never fails to prick my ears anywhere, I respond.   A small toddler had been leaning against my cart with that dreamy fearless curiosity 2-year-olds can display even in a crowd... eventually the woman came over, grabbed him, gave him a little smack... 'don't you wander, Princeton!'  I couldn't resist... yes, this was his given birth name.  Princeton. In the 'hood.  I had a little conversation with them both, assured the child he was going to be smart and important... and then a little inner monologue with myself on the way home about names.

I have a simple, basic three-letter name.  Actually my mother gave me the French 5-letter version, so the meaning of it would be understood as 'beloved' and not mistaken for the other derivative spelling-- 'friend'.  But the ratio of four-to-one/ vowels-to-consonants is a hard-spell for a child not to mention pretentious in the milieu of the 60's.  Compared to today's 'Beyonce' and Destiny-- the tag-names of the 21st century-- it is minimal.

My elementary school was part of the 1960's bussing experience.  Besides the physical introduction of diversity, there were the names.  We were all basically Tom, Dick and Harrys-- Kathy, Robin and Susans, in those days-- but these kids-- they were named after kings and presidents.  Their names were hyphenated and ornate-- colorful.  The girls were Velma and Darcelle; this elevated and embellished our morning role-call.  I went home and asked my Mom for a better name.  She did not grace this with a reply--  she who had given me one only, insisting when I got married my surname would fall into middle-status.

Many of my fellow students, as the 60's wore on, re-appropriated their African names.  Some of the Jewish kids I met in the city became radicalized and used Hebrew.  Rockers re-christened often--became single-names or branded themselves somehow, while it was fairly common for actors and public performers to round the edges of their ethnicities and smooth out family names into generic and non-specific identities.  My own father's family, like many immigrants desperately seeking 'Americanization'  had done this.   Go figure.

Lately it is rare that, in my local Starbucks where I am currently interviewing kids for my alma-mater (yes, little Princeton, I mention your name often) I rarely see a staff name-tag that looks familiar to me.  The variety of these is like the constantly expanding nomenclature for coffees and drinks-- exotic, conversation-provoking, ethnically transparent or confusing-- non-gender-identifying.  There are kids with names of countries, of seas, of flowers... of foods, of liquor brands and corporations.  Rappers acquire 3-part sentence names or words.  Common-- that one always sticks to me.  My name, in this expanded overpopulated internet world of infinite repeats-- is-- well, common.  Like most everything else.

I have googled my own name to find a whole column's worth of 'me'... I have even received mail and messages for my namesakes.  Three of us know one another-- in this city.  One friended me on Facebook.  Yesterday I asked a girl in the supermarket about her name tag... her Mom couldn't spell, she told me, but now she likes it.  It's different.  Desnity.  Spellcheck did a double-take, too.

While our traditional old-school vocabulary seems to decrease in usage, new languages and acronyms have become part of our work-arsenal.  People actually speak less to one another these days-- they text, they have their bluetooth and earbuds in... they engage less eye-to-eye.  They do listen... and they wear names.  It is hard to find a single human on a subway without a label or-- more often, several.  Wearing someone else's name was always strange to me.

At the end of her life, for some time, my mother could barely speak.  Her caretaker called her 'Queenie' which seemed wrong to me.  Queenie did not protest much of anything at the end.  Inside she'd regressed beyond even recognizing herself as 'Mom'.  But somehow, even at the very end, when I called her name,  I could see a small light.  Gift of God, the meaning.  No matter how we change, alter, edit, revise... no matter what our intimates and lovers call us in the dark, there is something in our original naming that imprints.  I thought about this, reading the obituary of Kirk Douglas... his adopted name meaning 'church', but his original name, 'Issur' meaning 'he who wrestles with God'... surely defined him.   Anyway, I think somehow he might have agreed, in the end.

Being Poor (part 2: Mr. Darkside)

So besides the hippie-romantic/back-to-the-earth/recycle-everything/spartan-asceticism-contrarian/anti-bling version of poverty, there is the sticking, handicapping, cracked-heart variety where you must say no to your children, where you glance in posh bakery windows which might as well be Tiffany's, where you pass fast-food fried chicken outlets and the scent of cheap oil and breading intoxicates and you cannot participate in even a wing, because it will break the daily bank of your pocket.  Where you plot and plan and divide your dollars with economic razor-blades because you are smart and determined and physically capable, thank goodness, of fighting the good fight to survive in this city.  Where on your heart the word 'No' seems permanently incised because you cannot have anything you formerly craved or desired or even simply wanted, in a former life.

But I have been to countries where poverty is of another variety altogether-- where the unrelieved sting of need and want is like the constant corrosive pain of chronic hunger and mothers watch helplessly while their children suffer to death.  It has warped me, in a way, so that I can never quite indulge in the relative luxury of normal life without an underlying sense of guilt.   I never fail to appreciate simple comfort, and process Manhattan daily spending habits, for the most part, as excessive.   While it's true I can no longer sit in a cafe with a sandwich, I don't miss it often.  If someone else is buying I will generally decline the favor unless I have done something valuable in exchange.   If I won the lottery tomorrow, I would undoubtedly observe the same habitual economies that became a part of my survival as a single mother.

My son, on the other hand-- like a rapper or athlete who steps from low-income into a reality of wealth-- is indulgent.  I admire it, in a way... new-found money often brings with it a kind of entitlement or revenge-spending which is part of the process of becoming 'comfortable'.  For me, I cannot imagine how I managed to buy us a home, and maintain the basics in this culture where the golden ring is heavy and placed beyond arm's length for basic people.  It also seems absurd that the 'haves' these days-- the extreme 'haves'-- are receiving more than they will ever need, and have often done far less than in former times where hard work and invention was a slow and cumulative phenomenon.  And it doesn't seem all that difficult, as it was in my father's day, to become a self-made millionaire.  Athletes are paid massively; entrepreneurs can sell an idea overnight and buy themselves a small island.

I shop carefully, as I have said before, in the poorer markets of Harlem.  I consider myself relatively fortunate, having had the foresight to become a home-owner rather than a renter and like the ant and grasshopper story, this has paid off for us.  My life is simple and apparently spartan enough so that the city insists I receive foodstamps.  While I can't eat in restaurants, this allows a pretty generous monthly amount to stock the pantry.  My fellow shoppers do not watch the sales the way I do; they make unhealthy food choices and don't seem to worry.  Many of them are on welfare-- get cash for things,  live rent-free in city housing which is not luxurious but adequate.  Some of them have river views which would cost the rest of us at least $3000 on top of the monthly rent.  But what I have also observed,  from my tiny circumscribed life of personal urban stoicism, is the way that being poor leaves a lasting mark.

On street corners in Harlem there are habitual loiterers who panhandle and hustle year in and year out.  There is no future in this... but there is a present.  Being poor keeps people in the present.  They can't worry about what will happen, or their retirement or funeral expenses because they are dealing with NOW.  Maybe that's not such a bad thing.  You only need to visit  upper Central Park on the 4th of July and smell the barbecue and listen to the ringing laughter of Hispanic children enjoying the holiday while their wealthy counterparts in the Hamptons are often smug and cranky and disappointed or drunk and miserable.  The competition of rich people-- with themselves, with their colleagues, their neighbors, their own family-- is relentless; even leisure is a call-to-arms.

My beloved friend took me out to a 4-star restaurant... maybe THE 4-star restaurant.  The breadth of menu was not just daunting but dazzling.  Course after course was served-- with such artistry and exquisite execution I felt like crying.  Beyond awe-- I was enchanted-- touched by the wand of dream-royalty, fairy-tale dining.  I looked around... people were laughing, eating, talking-- just like this was a daily meal.  Personally, it was like a sacred experience... I could not even recall the sequence of edible treats like tiny artistic tableaus which blew out my visual expectation and challenged my palette.  I wanted to stop it all-- to say--- just this, or this... I'll have this next week--- to go-- a postponement.  I felt overwhelmed-- overindulged-- like having a bath in liquid gold when all you needed was to wash off.  It was more than I could process.  The check-- I could not process that either-- enough to feed a family of 4 for a year, in many countries.

Last night I came home after a rough day-- cold and tired and tried-- and I made myself a pot of cheap potatoes and chicken.  Total cost: maybe $1... and it was warm and comforting and I felt grateful and happy.  I remembered working in a homeless shelter on the Bowery-- was it guilt which compelled me to do these things?  Because I am in a sense among the voluntary poor.  I look ahead, worry about some future- cannot spend more than I actually require, and if I had some opportunity, I would undoubtedly give it away.  After all, isn't that what rich people do, theoretically-- give things away?  And poor people... the kind I shop among in Harlem-- they do not generally want what I have to offer; they want something else-- an expensive watch, a vacation-- fashion... things that will do them no good... but still they want them; they will buy them on credit if they must.

According to national income statistics, I am at base-poverty level... but I feel pretty 'sated'... so how can I be poor?  There's no magic formula between need and want; it is warped by experience, expectation, poor values, materialism, distorted economics... I pity my downstairs neighbors who have just renovated their bloated apartment and continue to receive masses of boxes from Restoration Hardware.  It's so meaningless and pathetic... being at the bottom of the 1 percent: the poor rich, while I am among the rich poor.  

The man who won the $300,000,000 in Harlem-- I wonder what he needs now.  Something money can't buy?  Less? I would not want to walk in his shoes,  nor trade tickets.  I wonder what the moment felt like-- when he went from poor to rich.  Whether that happened.