February 25, 2000
Construction workers using a backhoe ripped open a twenty-foot long gash in the middle of 8th Street between Broadway and Lafayette the other day. At the bottom of this trench was dirt. Pure, unspoiled, light-brown dirt.
It’s strange to see dirt downtown. With everything paved over in gray, and tall buildings blocking out the blue sky, it’s easy to forget that just 200 years ago, this part of Manhattan was green and brown farmland. The carpet of soft leaves underfoot has been replaced with asphalt and litter. The invigorating morning bird chirp coming to you through the still trees has given way to the tooth-shattering concussions of bus and taxi horns coming at you through the mass of millions of shuffling pedestrians.
And so it was that in a city of extreme sights and smells and people, a simple patch of clean dirt caught my attention and captured my imagination.
The other night, while walking past Washington Mews near the beginning of Fifth Avenue, I saw another gash in time. Through the pane glass windows of an old brownstone, underneath the soft glow of crystal chandeliers, I spied a dozen middle-aged couples waltzing to live music I could barely hear from the outside. The smiles that animated their faces as they flitted about stood in sparkling contrast to the somber portraits hung on the salmon-colored wall behind them. It made me think of a time when there were no televisions, no radios, no telephones, no automobiles or airplanes. It was the pre-prerecorded era. Music was performed live or not at all. If you wanted to watch a show, you went to the local playhouse. To communicate with a far-off friend, you penned a letter and waited several months for a reply. And to see that friend, you’d have to board a steamer or take a long train or stagecoach ride, all of which would require many weeks of travel. So one probably didn’t travel much. People read books, went to town hall meetings, socialized at church. How quiet everything must have been. Imagine not hearing a phone ring or a single car drive by or even the background buzz of air conditioners or florescent overhead lights. Only your friends’ voices broke the silence.
It’s pretty hard to find any quiet time now. So when my friend Antonia Antonopoulos invited me up for a weekend to her family’s 300-acre farm near the Vermont border, I jumped at the chance. Up there, the only sounds I heard were the crunch of snow underfoot, the splitting of thick logs as I brought the heavy axe home, and later, the crackling of that wood in the fireplace. Instead of noise from a TV, there was the sound of Jack the Beagle’s soft breathing as he slept curled up next to the warm hearth.
I don’t have a sentimental view of a past that never really existed. Every generation has its problems. As Billy Joel said, "The good old days weren’t always good and tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems." More often then not, humans have faced the same problems, only in different guises. The Bubonic Plague instead of AIDS. War on the Plains versus war in Pristina. I’m sure that with the coming of the railroad to the Heartland, people complained about the interruption of wretched noise when the locomotive and boxcars rolled by once a day.
But one thing today is definitely different. In this fast-paced time, people are more still than they ever have been. In front of the TV, in their cubicle, standing on a train, or riding in a car, people don’t move a lot. Up there on the farm, I got tired from chopping wood after just a half-hour. But it was a good tired. When dinner came I was hungry and when night fell, I slept.
It was then that I understood the meaning of the phrase, "Idle hands are the Devil’s workshop." While I was up working in the country, not a single angst-ridden thought crossed my mind. Physical labor seemed to have had a purifying effect. Look at the literature from 200 years ago. People wrote about love and war. Basic things. Today people write about extreme fetish sex and lack of personal fulfillment. Could it be that our leisure makes us restless? Could it be that a sedentary life is, by nature, an unhappy life? And if so, how does one break the cycle? After all, the world is now set up for cars and trains and TVs and cubicles. To be a Luddite is nearly impossible.
I don’t have the answer. Working out during lunch seems to dissolve stress and makes me more clear-headed. But even then, one is in a giant sweaty germ box breathing in 200 other people’s bad air. And while a 300-acre farm near Bennington is great, who can afford that? "Fifty acres and a mule" is long gone. For most of us it’s a studio apartment and a small dog.
As Crosby, Stills, and Nash advised, "We’ve got to get ourselves back to the Garden." But how?
Broadway Jim Sosnicky