epiphany

It's January 6th (i.e. the feast of the Epiphany, i.e. the Twelfth Day of Christmas, i.e. twelve lords a leaping etc.)! In Spanish-speaking cultures, this is "Three Kings" day, when children wait for the visit of the three magi (with their camels!) and leave food (and grass for the camels) under their beds at night and awake to find gifts.

I'm at home today, waiting not for a camel but for a lovely boy to return from Bogota, which will be the nicest gift I can imagine (sorry, folks, I got a bit mushy while I was away!). I've been meaning to write another blog entry for weeks and even started one on the last day of the transit strike (more on that later), but even though I've been off of work since Dec. 23(!) I never got around to doing it.

Since this is the feast of the Epiphany and I typically devote these blog entries to long, thesis-based mini-epiphanies, how about a change of format? Instead of providing a nuanced analysis (at great length) of some topic, here are some random jottings with which to begin 2006:

The transit strike! I miss it, sort of. It's probably irresponsible (or, to use Mayor Bloomberg's word "thuggish") of me to say such a thing, since it cost the city millions (or was it billions?) of dollars in revenue right at the height of the consumerist shopping season, but I was actually glad that we had a strike. Yes, I was inconvenienced -- not as much as some people, of course, but I did have to arrange for rides from three different sources to get back and forth from Brooklyn each day, and I also squatted one night with the Mennonites (thanks, guys!). One day I even trudged out the door laden with all my Christmas presents and the belongings I needed to travel to Boston, fully expecting to have to cross the Manhattan Bridge on foot, when a serendipitous car of complete strangers drove up and gave me a ride. I was at work before 9 that day!

Yes, if I lived far out in Queens, say, and had no car or friends with cars, if I had an unlenient boss who wouldn't be flexible about my hours and my pay, if I had had to pay $30 for each cab ride to and from work, I would not have been so cheery about the strike. Mayor Bloomberg's line about the "criminality" of the strike was that the real victims were the average commuters (people who earned $10,000-$20,000 annually) and who would lose pay or maybe even lose their jobs because they couldn't get into work, when the striking workers had a starting salary of (I think) $30,000 (which is higher than the salary I started at at my job). Mike had a point, but that remark, like so much else in the cultural conversation surrounding the strike failed to take into account the larger context. The transit workers have a decent wage because they've unionized -- perhaps the appropriate response shouldn't have been to pity the suffering low-wage workers but to encourage the solidarity of the entire working class, encouraging more people to organize.

I know very little about contemporary labor relations, but as I see it the decks were really stacked against the union. The only bargaining chip that workers have in these negotiations is the right (and it is a right) to withold their labor, but a 1960s law makes it illegal for "essential" workers to do so, imposing incredibly burdensome fines (in addition to their lost pay) on each of the workers on the days that they exercise this right. Of course I can see the rationale, but I also strongly object to such a biased law. Where are the penalties imposed on the Transit Authority if they are simply intransigent in their negotiations? Without the specter of a looming strike what pressure is there on management to make concessions?

It was amazing to me how the media covered the story -- watching the television coverage you would have been hard pressed to hear anything that explained or analyzed the points of dispute. Instead it was all about traffic pileups; the media love a disaster because they know how to frighten people, but not how to raise their consciousnesses about the world around them. Bloomberg and the MTA went to great length to keep referring to it as"the illegal transit strike" and also to subtly try and isolate union president Roger Toussaint as if this one man had mulishly ("thuggishly"?) decided on his own to created mass chaos. Where was any consideration of the justness of the law that made the strike illegal? Why not depict Toussaint in the position he actually holds, as the representative and spokesperson of a large collective body? Getting people to think collectively is not in the interest of the state or of the media, especially not during the holiday season!

The education came from the experience itself; whenever the world goes topsy-turvy, you're bound to learn something. How many of us ever sat around and realized quite how dependent we are on public transit before it was taken from us? How many of us have ever chosen to band together with our co-workers or indeed with complete strangers in order to make the most of a difficult situation? Dealing with the strike was (for a brief period) an education in collectivity, it was an occasion on which many of us had to rely on others in new and unexpected ways. Going to work and being at work seemed different on the days of the strike, the very air of the city seemed somehow crisper as if it had been caffeinated. I'm not saying we should take away essential public services on a regular basis, but the deprivation was definitely a wake-up call for those willing to heed it. Too bad our society is set up to isolate the striking workers and to foment animosity against them, rather than encouraging us to consider the ways in which we can all begin to develop a sense of solidarity.

I've read very little interesting commentary on the strike, but here's a nice little blurb from (of all people) Squid and the Whale writer/director Noah Baumbach on the way the strike made the city feel. "Uninviting"? "In turmoil"? I share his nostalgia.

I guess I promised you some tidbits and then I went on a rant. Oh, well! There aren't a lot of coherent thoughts in my head these days (being away from work for so long really does a number on you!). One thing I did yesterday was to sit down with my new 2006 daily planner, dutifully copying in already scheduled appointments, classes and meetings, which brought me all the way up to next Christmas! (Most of them had to do with the three semesters of classes in the community-based performance school I work at; some others had to do with a show I'm directing in April.)

Scheduling appointments in January for events in December may seem like the height of hubris. Who knows what contingencies will intervene between now and then. It's entirely possible that my life will change in some drastic way -- I might have to find a new job or a new place to live. Maybe another transit strike will be called. A year ago, did I ever imagine I'd be sitting in this apartment awaiting the return of a 22-year old Colombian boy? It's human to look forward, trying to set things in stone, but important to recognize that you can never be certain what the next day will bring. (Don't you love how I always tie everything together, even when I'm not even trying to? There's something unexpected for ya!)

Speaking of the limits of human knowledge, I think I will end with an excerpt from W. H. Auden that I discovered today when perusing some love poetry (why on earth would I be doing that?). I'd link to the whole text (the poem is called "Heavy Date"), but I haven't been able to find it online. It's a nice reminder, I think that we never quite know what we're getting into, in love or anything else upon this mortal coil:

Slowly we are learning,
We at least know this much,
That we have to unlearn
Much that we were taught,
And we are growing chary
Of emphatic dogmas;
Love like Matter is much
Odder than we thought.