Gabriella Grimes (Final Paper because "why not?")

The Upper East Side is Full of Ants

    New York City is easily one of the most romanticized cities in the nation, and perhaps even the world. One never quite often comes in contact with someone who hasn’t heard of this city full of bright people and bright lights, whether via a book, movie, or some other source of questionable information. By New York City, most people, of course, mean Manhattan. A surprising number of people are unaware that Manhattan is not synonymous with New York City, as there are four other boroughs which occupy the space. Due to this preconceived idea of what New York City is, people have the tendency to view it in one light, and because of incredible works of fiction, this means dull streets and buildings, too many people rushing from Point A to Point B, ironic coffee shops with the art of local artists adorning its walls, and subways on which creepy men thrice your age will stare at you for an uncomfortably long period of time before you make eye contact with a handsome stranger. From my personal experiences, New York City is not just about the yellow taxi-cabs or the hipsters drawing in Union Square; it’s really so much more than that in terms of aesthetics, and because there are so many aspects of the city to take into account, it’s hard for most people to portray the “less exciting” parts of it. However there is amazing beauty in simplicity, and one of the most simplistically beautiful areas in the city to observe is the Upper East Side. Living in East Harlem for the past two years, I was never far from this area, yet I avoided it. Nevertheless, starting college on the Upper East Side forced me to explore more of this area in New York City’s borough of Manhattan, and although it’s an incredibly intimidating environment, there’s a certain unique beauty to it which sets it apart.

    My most recent run in with the Upper East Side was not too long ago on an early Friday evening. The weather forecast for the day was questionable, and stepping above ground from the train station, I felt as though the clouds had made their way from the sky to thousands of feet below, onto the back of my neck. The humidity was horribly uncomfortable, and within a minute of me being outside, I had begun to perspire. The train I was on just four minutes before had been air conditioned perfectly, and the drastic change in temperature and air quality caused my jacket to cling to my now slightly damp arms. I was always one to overheat easily, and the horribly warm and wet air took me out of my comfort zone in this already unfamiliar environment. Before this point, I don’t think I had ever made the trip to 77th ST and Lexington Avenue by myself, and although I would be meeting friends in just a short amount of time, I would have to spend the present by myself until arrival to my destination. New environments are always terrifying when you’re alone, and it isn’t just the aspect of it being a foreign place; when you’re alone in a place you’ve never been to, you’re forced to take care of yourself more. You have to be keener to your surroundings and actually use your abilities to travel around. When I’m with someone else in a new place, even if it’s new to them as well, there are still two people working together to stay on track, but alone, it’s very easy to get lost in your own thoughts as well as the surrounding area. And as soon as I realized I would have to find my way to my friend’s job alone, I perked up and stopped in front of a black barred fence to get my bearings, and my sudden attention to this place caused each of my senses to be assaulted.

It was just after six p.m. and the Friday didn’t make it any better, as there were people rushing to and fro in an attempt to make it home as quickly as possible. The horns of taxis blared deafeningly as their loud engines revved up when the lights changed from red to green. Both women and men stomped quickly up and down the sidewalk, their high heels and loafers making abrupt slapping sounds on the pavement, and it seemed as though every other person was speaking loudly on the phone. Phrases of “I’ll meet you there,” and, “I was thinking Chinese for dinner,” as well as, “You’ll never believe what this ass in my office did today,” became jumbled together to make a loud hum of voices, and I thought it was so funny that everyone was having their own conversation about things they found important, and it became lost in the sounds of the city. As a bus heading further downtown from Riverdale in the Bronx sped past me, I could hear a slight buzz in my ear due to the vehicle’s massive weight flying by me at such a ferocious pace, and just moments later, I heard an oncoming train from beneath my feet. The sounds of the city can be thought of as a song: the horns, the engines, the heels, and the hums were all unique sounds on their own, as are the guitar, the bass, the percussion, and the poetic verses of something that comes together to create your favorite song you hear on the radio. The noises attacking my ear drums on the Upper East Side is a beautiful melody to some and that annoying tune your neighbors play at three a.m. to others. To me, it just is Manhattan. These sounds are part of what makes this place what it is, and although I love this tune, sometimes I feel the need to warp the sound with my headphones, so everything becomes a mumble. On this particular Friday, when I realized which direction I had to walk to get to 75th st, I called my friend to let her know I was on my way, and as I began to walk, my voice joined in with the others’, and as did the sound of Doc Martens hitting the sidewalk while I made a bad joke about the weather.

    I never quite understood why one would choose the Upper East Side as a place of residence  based purely on aesthetics. It’s not Harlem, with its brownstones from the sixties which give the area a vintage aura and alternative Black youth who get the side-eye from their elders who wonder why they have their hair shaved on the sides; nor is it East Harlem with its colorful murals of strong single mothers holding their children in this new territory, or its very real man riding around on a giant tricycle with fake chickens attached to it as he blasts Salsa music from a boombox that he must have had since the early 90s; it’s not even as conservatively eccentric as St. Marks, where all the angsty teens go dressed in all black to get piercings behind their parents’ backs in one of the shops with rainbow wigs and bright pink mohawk beanies in front of its dirty window lined with bright green fluorescent lights. The Upper East Side is not as appealing for the eyes as any of these other places, but then of course you have to look at who’s living there. Walking down the street, I noticed that most of the people walking around this neighborhood were middle-aged and older white Americans, probably most with a decent amount of money, children, and friends; and the surrounding area would be perfect for all three of those things. The Upper East Side has beautiful boutiques with fashion designers I could never hope to afford, restaurants with white tablecloths that I would mess up very easily, buildings either so old they have historical significance or so young that they too can cost a fortune because of an abundance of amenities no actual person needs, and Catholic schools which produce Atheists instead of the intended devout followers of God. Walking down Lexington Avenue, I could easily imagine a middle aged couple bringing their friends to one of these worn out brown buildings with beige trim which you can’t quite tell its present uses and explaining to them that some classical musician performed there once just a few years ago. I felt that the large buildings, each a different shade of grey, would be appealing to a man who likes very dull colors when he comes home because he spends all day as an art teacher buried in paints, markers, and the colorful creativity of his private school students. I thought that the “gourmet” deli which carried everything my local grocery stores do, but at a slightly higher price, would be appealing to someone who just doesn’t care about prices because they’re a diplomat’s son. As I walked alone, I understood I was letting my imagination go just a bit crazy, however for someone like me in a neighborhood such at this one, this was how I kept my sanity. The Upper East Side does not appeal to me because of the vibrant colors littering its streets as East Harlem or the young hipsters with frohawks and New Balance sneakers as Harlem, but rather because it’s the lackthereof. This neighborhood is a mecca of conservative people who let their creativity run wild in the most simplistic ways, and this difference is what sets the Upper East Side apart from other areas.

As I awkwardly waddled down East 75th st from Lexington Ave to Third with a messenger bag and my ukulele on my back, I noticed a varying amount of scents, some pleasant, and others ones I would never like to smell again. A sweet aroma which must have been a cake drifted through the window of an apartment on the ground level of a building. It reminded me of the cakes my mom had made for all of my life, and I was particularly fond of my ability to smell at that point, as I could almost taste the delicious dessert in the back of my mouth. Of course since I have the greatest luck of any person in the world, as I took in a deep breath of nostalgia-filled baked air, I managed to reach the horrifying part of the block at which there happened to be a garbage truck picking up trash. This giant once-white mechanical monster with its splashes of brown, red, yellow, and green everywhere on its enormous body seemed to be the physical manifestation of all the evil in this world. The horrible thing about the smell of garbage trucks is that they are really all the worst scents a person could encounter on a daily basis conveniently wrapped up in one disgusting package so you can remember the horrors of everyday life all at once. This particular garbage truck reminded me of the baby who soils his diaper on the bus when his mother has to get off at the last stop and so do I.  It reminded me of the alleys I walk past beside bars where every night like clockwork, drunkards go to relieve their alcohol-filled bladders. Also present was the scent of that questionable piece of meat I wrapped up in a ziplock bag couple months ago and forced it deeper and deeper into my fridge every passing week until I opened my fridge one day and thought an animal had lived its entire life in it. I could smell the  week-old mayonnaise that had been left under the sun and even the hungry wild animals ignored this jar of oil and egg despair; and speaking of eggs,  I could also smell the eggs my friend who speaks too closely to me with their mouth too wide open had for breakfast. Mix all of these scents together with just a hint of bleach and that was the odor that the universe decided to bless me with on this lovely Friday evening. This wasn’t beautiful. This wasn’t an aspect of the Upper East Side which I admire, but it was reality. Even in this alluring neighborhood with its pale grey sidewalks and perfectly manicured grass surrounding trees in barred off squares, there’s garbage and rats and bugs, and the uncertainty that every other human being on this Earth faces on whether or not their existence means something. 
When I walked through the Upper East Side just a week ago, I found it very intimidating; when you’re not used to a place, you create an idea of it on your head based on what you might see for a short period of time or what others might have told you. However glances and hearsay aren’t reliable sources of information, and the only way to realize that humanity is connected despite our varied lifestyles is to get out and go somewhere. 77th Street is not a place for royalty, and people who live there are not more important, more relevant, or less unsure about life than anyone else. They can sit on their balconies fourteen stories up, and look down at everyone and compare them to ants, however those people looking up will think, “What an ant of a person that one is.” Humanity has spent centuries perfecting--or rather attempting to perfect--our means of life and the structures and environments we live in. I might live a modest life in a small apartment in a colorful neighborhood in which a man rides a tricycle with chickens attached, and another person might live in a neighborhood rich in the history of their Black relatives, and one more person might live on top of a piercing parlor where a fifteen year old with a fake I.D. and a grudge against his parents is getting his eyebrow pierced, but how are we different from the man on his fourteenth story balcony? We all are here, we all are living, and we all will live. When we die, there may be no recollection of us besides in the minds of just a couple more generations, and then what? Not to be gruesome, but maggots will do their work on the decaying bodies which once held a soul and thoughts, and nature will do the rest. Humans make the mistake of thinking that nature works for us, but it could very well be the other way around. Nature will take over and do what it needs to do to survive. Humanity will continue perfecting, for centuries, and maybe even millennia from now, but as we do so, Mother Nature will continue to go about her business as well, and every time one of us large ants perils, a small ant will have another leaf to hide under when it begins to rain. Really it’s a beautiful thought: that when we can no longer stare at these brown buildings with the beige trim on Lexington Ave, we can help an animal live its life. I for one wouldn’t be sorry if three hundred years from now, I had helped a tree in front of a very grey building in a very bland city grow to its full potential and provide shade and a place to rest for a beautiful bird.

Kelly Bonilla 11

So I am awake at this ungodly hour getting ready to head to CT for a salsa convention for my job. And the first thing I notice when I wake up is my knee feels like a baseball. It is so swollen because of the rain and my allergies are kicking right now. But the smell of the morning dewis quite peaceful, so thats a plus.

Kelly Bonilla 10

Thinking about our workshopping and the essay writing process we used in this class, I find that it certainly helped. Throughout most of the academic career, whenever the professor assigned a paper and recommended writing one or two drafts, I never did so. I just wrote and handed whatever I managed to get on paper. However, I found that sharing the drafts with a group really helps to gain a new perspective on the assignment. It's especially helpful when the group is member of the actual class- giving my paper to any other close friend and you're more than likely only going to hear what you want to hear. But the feedback from actual classmates helps because we've already been considering the same themes and topics- so its a fresh perspective but from someone whom you sort of share the same or similar brainwave. In short, I really like the in-class workshopping.

Kelly Bonilla 9

Here is the final draft of essay #3

Final Paper: Text Analysis

            Upon reading Wendell Berry’s “An Entrance to the Woods”, the reader can easily succumb to the vastness of the natural world, as the title might suggest. More striking about this piece is the pensive state in which the author find himself, alone and contemplating his somewhat insignificant role in the wilderness along the Red River Gorge in Kentucky, and furthermore, in the universe. As he treks though the this unfamiliar landscape, the underlying sentiments he expresses throughout the experience range from pleasant excitement, to resentments towards the technological and/or synthetic world, and back to a peaceful state of enjoyment. It is in that second phase of his sentimental journey, the resentment, where we see his trepidation with his own insignificance in the universe, and for that matter, that of all human beings on Earth. Here we get a sense of deep ecology, one of the themes previously discussed earlier in the semester. While avoiding any notions of radical change to our anthropocentric views and lifestyles- seeing as he does drive back home to his synthetic and material life- what Berry expresses explicitly is the preference of a more simplistic life among nature in all its glory, history, and albeit sometimes loneliness.

            Wendell Berry’s preference to a less materialistic kind of life is not uncommon and the idea certainly does have merit. According to Berry, it would appear that our role as capitalist consumers has allowed us ourselves to be consumed in that very realm. He explains once he is settled in his campsite that at first he finds it difficult to connect with this new space, not simply because it is unfamiliar territory, but because his own sense of self is still consumed or being held captive in the world from which he escaped. He writes, “though I am here in body, my mind and my nerves too are not yet altogether here. We seem to grant to our high-speed roads and our airlines the rather thoughtless assumption that people can change places as rapidly as their bodies can be transported,” (766). He feels that while he physically inhabits the space, his mindset has yet to catch up with his body- his consumerist mindset is holding him back, or at least delaying him from feeling truly present in that moment, in that space.

            He further expands on this sensation of hesitation to connect in regards to the senses. Modernization and technological advancements, while having simplified many aspects of life in terms of labor and efficiency, have left us passing through life in a furious rush- the consequence of which, aside from shortening to travel time from point A to point B, has muffled our senses and left us in a blur. “Our senses, after all, were developed to function at foot seeds; and the transition from foot travel to motor travel, in terms of evolutionary time, has been abrupt. The faster one goes, the more strain there is on the senses, the more they fail to take in, the more confusion they must tolerate or gloss over- and the longer it takes to bring the mind to a stop in the presence of anything,” (766-767). In a manner of speaking, our senses have somewhat lost their evolutionary keenness - Berry might say, especially referring to those of us city dwellers- from our own personal consumption into the material and modern world.

            Later, as his senses begin to catch up to his body’s physical presence, Berry begins his process of complete emersion into this new and unfamiliar territory where it is not the melancholy loneliness that troubles him, but rather the notion of his insignificance in the space and the idea of that insignificance expanding to all corners of the earth:  

             “Everything looks as it did before I came, as it will when I am gone. When I   look over my little camp I see how tentative and insignificant it is. Lying there         in my bed in the dark tonight, I will be absorbed in the being of this place… Perhaps the most difficult labor for my species is to accept its limits, its        weakness and ignorance. But here I am. This wild place where I have camped           lies within an enormous cone widening from the center of the earth out            across the universe, nearly all of it a mysterious wilderness in which the        power and the knowledge of men count for nothing,” (767).

While he may leave a footprint or even some small token of remembrance behind, the winds of time and the ways of the wilderness will make it seem as if he were never there at all as they always have and always will (if we capitalist consumers would allow such a natural phenomena to continue). This is where the idea of deep ecology comes into play, that nature’s processes and phenomena will play out with all autonomy and sovereign force where nothing is foreseeable or can be controlled by the hands or desires of man.

             And on that note, he comes to terms and accepts his minute role in the world, in the sphere of all beings;

            “And so, coming here, what I have done is strip away the human façade that             usually stands between me and universe, and I see more clearly where I am.     What I am able to ignore most of the time, but find undeniable here, is that all          wildernesses are one… Alone here, among the rocks and trees, I see that I am alone also among the stars. A stranger here, unfamiliar with my           surroundings, I am aware also that I know only in the most relative terms my         whereabouts within the black reaches of the universe. And because the         natural processes are here so little qualified by anything human, this   fragment of the wilderness is also joined to other times,” (768).

           

            At this point in his journey, Berry considers the immense differences between life in world he knows and in which he lives and life in this world. He explores the notion that through technological advancements, human beings have almost given up all autonomy in their own means of survival. Unlike the man of the wilderness, the modern man is completely dependent on all modernizations just to make it through the day- cars, highways, cell phones and more consumerist necessities- let alone go though life as a whole. “In comparison to the usual traveler with his dependence on machines and highways and restaurants and motels- on the economy and the government, in short- the man who walks into the wilderness is naked indeed. He leaves behind his work, his household, his duties, his comforts- even, if he comes alone, his words. He immerses himself in what he is not.” (769).

And so a transformation must occur- the modern city man cannot belong in the wild or the wilderness without leaving behind or removing his former self from the space. He must be completely stripped of all dependencies and burdens.

            What is interesting about this is the highway. The manmade highway acts as both an escape and a trail to and from both worlds, the synthetic and natural. Berry remarks on the importance of stripping one’s self of all conceptions of the modern world, and yet the “roar” of the highway is a constant presence in his experience. Herein lies the question of whether or not the two worlds are completely separate if the (manmade) link between them is always present and the “naked” man of the wilderness arrives with his camping equipment which is, no doubt, from a capitalist business owner who is just dependent on the economy as the men who designed and built those very cars and highways. Are the two spheres so separate when one impedes and interferes with the processes of the other? “The roar of the highway is the voice of the American economy; it is sounding also wherever strip mines are being cut in the steep slopes of Appalachia, and wherever cropland is being destroyed to make roads and suburbs, and wherever rivers and marshes and bays are forests are being destroyed for the sake of industry and commerce,” (770).

            As the journey makes it way to an end, Berry’s sentiments change almost completely. Rather than the anxiety of the interfering synthetic realm and his relative insignificance in the universe, he feels a sort of peace and even relief with his presence in the wild. “Today, as always when I am afoot in the woods, I feel the possibility of the reasonableness, the practicability of living the world in a way that would enlarge rather than diminish the hope of life... I am alive in the world, this moment, without the help of any machine… I feel the lightness of body that a man must feel who has just lost fifty pounds of fat,” (771). And so we can see that while he doesn’t necessarily call for a complete reversal back to primitive life of the naked man in the wild, Berry is very gracious of the wild and its power over him as his awareness of all of his surroundings - his place in the wild, in the tech-savvy world, in the universe, in life itself- continues to expand. 

Kelly Bonilla 8

One of the things this class has made me think a lot of is changes in environment. I grew up in Queens, there's not a great deal of landscape to be appreciated around here. But thinking about new settings I've found myself in, I remembered my first trip to Chile about four or five years ago. So I decided to share this photo taken from a hill top looking over the capital, Santiago, with the Andes right there in the background. What was striking about this moment was noticing the difference in air qualities in the altitudes. On that hill top, as you might imagine, has lots of trees, fresh air and cool shade. But go down into the city for about15 minutes later your eyes will start to water and feel incredibly dry and irritated. That's not sleepy eyes from jetlag, honey, that's because Santiago de Chile is one of the most heavily air-polluted cities in the world. If you're not used to such dense pollution, you just tear up at random moments. And if you have asthma, forget about it. My brother went through about four pumps during that trip. But thats a great photo, huh?

Kelly Bonilla 7

Thinking about the Berry excerpt, specifically about the man naked in the wilderness. Honestly, the al fresco feeling isn't always quite as refreshing as you would think. My old dance studio used to participate in some end of summer fair at Forest Park. We would perform in the basketball court, and being that it was a park there weren't exactly any dressing rooms and we never had a portable tent big enough for all the performers. So sometimes a few of us would resort to changing costumes behind a nearby bush- not a hedge of bushes, just the one. Needless to say, I'm not quite as shy as I used to be.

Kelly Bonilla 6

I find that whenever I think about nature my first thought is always squirrels or raccoons, or other animals that we city dwellers generally find annoying (pigeons...). And then sometimes I think a couple years back when we were that weird family on the block because of our pet duck. 

I'm being totally serious; we had a pet duck for about two years when I was a teenager. My mom's cousin had it first, but then her mom said she didn't want it anymore and threatened to make duck stew out of him unless she found him a new home. So my grandmother (who lives right next door) decided to take him. My father named him Afleck- how clever, Dad- and we kept him in the backyard. I always think about how incredibly odd and random that must have been for the neighbors to hear the quacking from our yard. 

He was a good duck. Unfortunately, he hurt his wing fighting with one of the stray cats from the block and after that he got really sick that winter. So my mom's uncle came over and killed him one day and my great grandmother made dinner out of him and tried to get me to eat it. She told me it was chicken and I almost believed. Thank goodness Wendy's was right across the street.