Lost in transit

Memory Loss

I was talking to someone tonight about the Film Forum, one of New York’s great arthouse cinemas. He’d lived in New York for a couple of years, so I mentioned that it was on Houston Street.

“Oh, yeah, but I thought it was called the Angelika.”

“No, no, that one’s further east, near Broadway. Film Forum’s on West Houston, over by... um... what Seventh Avenue South turns into. What's that street called? Shit.”

I couldn’t for the life of me remember the name of the street – a street that as the main approach to the Holland Tunnel I’d had to drive down (and get stuck in traffic on) more times than I could count.

How could I forget a street name in New York? These are the streets that I grew up driving on, that I knew better than the back of my hand. I can still close my eyes and picture entire blocks in my head, mapping them out storefront by storefront. Head over to the west side of Second Ave. between 19th and 20th Streets: you’ll find an animal hospital, a liquor store, a dry cleaners, the Bloominghouse Deli and a pizzeria. The streets of the city were always facts for me, things I knew as sure as basic arithmetic or the elements of water. First Avenue turns into Allen, Third Avenue into the Bowery, Seventh Avenue into...what?

Of course, I’ve spent less than two of the past seven years actually living in New York, so naturally my memory must fade with lack of use. I understand this, rationally. I can’t remember many street names from Chicago or Prague, which makes sense given the time I spent in each place, but hell’s teeth – somehow, New York should be different. I grew up there, spent almost three decades of my life there. Had maps of the city blu-tacked to my walls. Debated the finer points of local navigation with my father (“Forget 23rd, it’ll be packed – we can get on the FDR at 20th Street”).

Besides, I’m a native New Yorker, the child of a native New Yorker – the city should be part of my genetic code, the strands of my DNA forming not a double helix but the winding thread of Broadway, that old native hunting trail, sliding through the warp and weft of the math-rigid city grid, or perhaps the shape of a hundred small triangles, a biological echo of the Chrysler Building’s white neon teeth. Forgetting the name of a street I never had to try to remember feels like forgetting the name of a relative, like the first onset of some kind of geographic dementia, and suddenly everything seems cast in a different light.

Who am I, if not a New Yorker? How much of who you are depends on where you live, or where you have lived? I'm certainly not a Chicagoan or a Praguer, and I wouldn't call myself anything more than an honorary Melburnian. Could I be some weird hybrid of them all? Or am I evolving into something new altogether?

If I’m enough of an émigré to have forgotten that Seventh Avenue turns into Varick Street, I’m certainly still enough of a New Yorker to get upset about it.

And most of all, to feel absolutely mortified at having had to look it up.

Of pigs, dogs and karma

On Saturday, Feb. 17, we leave the year of the dog behind and on Sunday the 18th we enter the year of the pig, the dinghai year, year 4704 of the Yellow Emperor, or year 2551 of the Buddha, here in Taiwan more commonly known as year 96 of the Republic and, of course, year 2007 of the Common Era. Since I don't have any stories about pigs that I can recall at the moment, I'll say fare thee well to the Year of the Dog by telling you about a little dog I know in particular and about dogs and pets in Taiwan in general, with a horrible little Chinese aside about a cat I never knew.

We have an adorable, sweet, crippled, snowey-white little mini-poodle. We always have to carry her, or let her sit on our lap. When we eat breakfast, she's either on my lap or on her own little pillow on her own chair between the two of us. If we watch TV, she is either on D's lap or mine, next to one of us or between us on the sofa. When I'm on the john, she is sitting on the floor in front of me willing me to pick her up. At night, she sleeps between us or on the left side of D. If D goes out without bringing her, as she just did, she will start whining and crying immediately and run straight to me to tell on D for not bringing her. And she's great to just watch, because she is really curious and has to see everything and anything going on around her, and sometimes she gives me a look from the corner of her eye, as if she was flirting and trying to look at me when she thinks I don't notice.

We really love this little doggie, and everytime I yell at her for chewing on the cats, I am always filled with remorse. Why?

One afternoon when we had just moved back to Taiwan from Thailand in 2000, D found a dog lying half-dead, half-starved, panting, three-quarters covered in a heap of mud. D only noticed because the heap of mud was moving from the dog's weak breath. She felt sorry for the dog and decided to take her home, but first she brought it to a vet to have her checked for skin or other diseases. And what does the man say? "What? You here again, little one?"

It turns out that this was the third time someone brought the dog in to have it checked. In other words, she had been abandoned three times, probably because she is crippled. Her spine is curved, and she can't use her back legs separately, it's like they're tied together into one. When D had the fur shaved off to check for skin disease, she noticed that there were no scars, so she hasn't been kicked or hit by a car. Probably grew up in too small a cage, so she could never stand up straight.

D was so touched by all this that she decided to name her Yinxin -- Impression-on-the-heart.

Wouldn't surprise me at all if her spine really is deformed because she grew up in a small cage. When D first bought a leash and brought her out for a walk, she just sat there, staring at D. Didn't know what to do, she had never been walked. When she finally did get it, she couldn't walk, just sort of hopped along. She does a lot better now, jumps onto a low sofa or bed and can even run, although in a strange, hopping three-legged manner, and she gets tired pretty fast. She still balances on her two front legs to pee or poop because she can't spread her back legs apart. And when she eats, she prefers to lie down, or she'll have to balance on her front legs then, too, to be able to reach down to the food.

Although the attitudes to pets are changing here in Taiwan, hand in hand with increasing wealth, more leisure time, and maybe as a result of weakening social and family bonds, the way to keep your cat or dog is still to have it locked up in a cage, except for when you want to play with it. People are always surprised when we tell them our four cats and the dog are allowed to run free in the apartment. And strange as it may sound, many people here are actually afraid not only of dogs, but also of cats. I have never been able to understand why. I mean, I have met people in other countries disliking cats, too, but never actually being afraid of them.

A friend of ours used to have a neighbor with two Great Danes. Guess what. They were also kept in a great big cage in the garage. True, I promise. And a Dutch friend of ours used to keep his two dogs in a small cage on the balcony because his Taiwanese wife wouldn't let him bring them in the house. But that was probably also because they stank so badly. I always kept telling him to clean them because he never did, and in the end I had to stop because he became so annoyed. But they really did stink.

People here often say that they have so and so many cats and dogs, when in fact they are only feeding strays on a semi-regular basis and doing nothing else to care for them. And if they really do have them as pets, the are often thrown out when the kids get tired of them, or when they are unwanted for some other reason. They're only animals, after all. I have several times seen abandoned strays with a muzzle here in Taipei, which means that they will starve to death in a week or so. And once, in China, I saw a bunch of guys -- grown men -- douse a cat in petrol or something, set it on fire, and then laugh as it ran around screaming, dying, lighting up the street.

People just don't care. I find this strange in a Buddhist-daoist society where people are supposed to believe in reincarnation. For all you know, you may be mistreating your uncle or dad or grandmother -- that is no way to build up karma, is it?