Wednesday, November 13, 2002

New York Snippets: Adjective to

New York Snippets:
Adjective to describe Manhattan: intendensity; where the intensity is dense…
For such a tall city, they sure pour a short orange juice…
A toast to the best man, a gentleman of high reputation…

Mezzuzahs: I found it strangely comforting as I peregrinated to see the profusion of mezzuzahs on doorways everywhere I went.  I’ve lived on my own for half my life and never put one up for myself, so I was surprised that I should take solace in this.  But there you have it.  It put me in mind more than anything else of my dry cleaner in San Francisco, Ken of Blue Bird Laundry, proud of his Korean heritage and birth… His shop is small and, as typical, is decorated with displays of collar stays and lint brushes and faded posters of women in no-longer-fashionable and overly-pleated - but impeccably clean - clothes… At the doorpost to his shop I noticed a small oblong lozenge buried under thick layers of paint; inspected closely I could see it was a mezzuzah, the sacred reminder of the supernal order to be hung on all doors by observant Jews.  I asked Ken about it; he said, ‘I know, it is the prayer for the Jews.  Not long after I moved in, a customer showed it to me and explained.  I decided to leave it.  I like it.  Anyway, what could it hurt?’ What, indeed.  For a Korean, it was a very Jewish answer.