Time: 11:00 pm (December 31, really...)
Scene: As I emerge from the 50th Street subway station, I see a crowd behind bars on Broadway -- a thousand souls facing south -- strictly guarded by NYPD.
This is New Year's Eve in Times Square. Or, seven blocks north, that is.
It seems that to get a "good spot" for the New Year's celebrations, you have to arrive before 9am, and not spend the final hours of 2010 listening to well-intentioned sermons from associate rabbis at upper west side synagogues. As I sat in the back row of B'nai Jeshrun, I kept waiting for an emotional response to "letting go" of Jewish ritual as my primary conduit to all things larger than myself for a year. But all that I kept thinking was "This is excruciating. I am bored. When did the hottest synagogue on the Upper West Side jump the shark? And why must we pretend to feel holiness? I feel nothing..."
That feeling of nothing is what compelled me to this blog - The UnKosher Calendar. I'm not saying that this year will bring any great epiphany; all that I'm looking to accomplish is to feel something again. My heart is open - my body (and soul, if we do have one...) conditioned for the race. In the words of the Hebrew bible "Hineini" - I am here. Find me, God. Or whatever you are...
...which brings me to Times Square. I loved talking to this guy:
I envied his belief and his search for something; a something that took him from his home in New Mexico and all the way to New York City for New Year's. And despite the fact that his journey was tough (his truthful assessment of his boredom and disappointment humbled my inner optimist), he still knew how to smile in an authentic way. His acceptance of societal ennui was the clearest illustration of faith I saw as we rang in the New Year with bells, whistles, balloons, smart-phones and fireworks. As the Twizzler sign blinked, and the countdown began, the crowd rose as one voice. One voice, with cellphones rising, in a rally for time.
I wonder how much our recording cellphones splinter our experience of the moment. Can we completely be present in the ritual as a portion of our body captures the moment? Is the nature of the raised arm the rising of a limb toward a plane of unconsciousness? Isn't the point of ritual to transcend the moment, squeeze in between space and time? When I record this moment, can I fully be in it as well?
After the countdown was over, everyone turned and left, pretty much immediately. An anti-climax. It made me wonder - are we exhausted by rituals, disappointed by them, or so eager to move on to the next thing at all times that we are never truly anywhere anymore?
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