Spiritual Affiliations
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I turned 49 yesterday in New York. 16 years ago, I arrived in the city to begin graduate studies in writing poetry. Stepping into the stupendous Great Hall of Grand Central Station to take the Metro-North train to Sarah Lawrence College, I thought, as many did before me, I'm finally here. On the train, I spoke to the first New Yorker I didn't have to. He turned out to be an elderly jeweler whose family fled the war in Europe.
New York is a city of refuge for many people, including artists. Here you find, at last, your own people, who are related to you, not by blood, but by spirit. On the morning of my birthday, I wrote a poem about a young gay Singaporean who came here to study fashion and found himself, before graduation, marrying a man 21 years older than him, and, upon graduation, adopting two teenage children. During our interview for the poem, it was obvious that he was still amazed at what he had done.
Because it is spring break, I spent my birthday in bed reading Nabokov's Pnin. Living in exile, Professor of Russian Literature Timofey Pnin cannot forget the Old Country before the Revolution. As he grows older, more and more he sees childhood figures and scenes in his American life. Tricked by his pregnant wife, he had brought over to America another man's son. Just before leaving for my birthday dinner with Guy at New Malaysia Restaurant, I read about the tender meeting between elderly Pnin and teenage Victor. Pnin has just run upstairs to defenestrate a soccer ball he bought for the boy when the artistic Victor, not knowing about the gift, expressed a dislike for sports.
The boy artist has romantic fantasies about Russia, gained from movies and books. He will be introduced, I speculate, to more Russian fantasies by Pnin, for when you have been away for so long you have certain ideas about the Old Country that people living there cannot recognize but will dispute. They claim the authority of experience. You have only your claims of the imagination.
Jee Leong Koh
March 21, 2019
I turned 49 yesterday in New York. 16 years ago, I arrived in the city to begin graduate studies in writing poetry. Stepping into the stupendous Great Hall of Grand Central Station to take the Metro-North train to Sarah Lawrence College, I thought, as many did before me, I'm finally here. On the train, I spoke to the first New Yorker I didn't have to. He turned out to be an elderly jeweler whose family fled the war in Europe.
New York is a city of refuge for many people, including artists. Here you find, at last, your own people, who are related to you, not by blood, but by spirit. On the morning of my birthday, I wrote a poem about a young gay Singaporean who came here to study fashion and found himself, before graduation, marrying a man 21 years older than him, and, upon graduation, adopting two teenage children. During our interview for the poem, it was obvious that he was still amazed at what he had done.
Because it is spring break, I spent my birthday in bed reading Nabokov's Pnin. Living in exile, Professor of Russian Literature Timofey Pnin cannot forget the Old Country before the Revolution. As he grows older, more and more he sees childhood figures and scenes in his American life. Tricked by his pregnant wife, he had brought over to America another man's son. Just before leaving for my birthday dinner with Guy at New Malaysia Restaurant, I read about the tender meeting between elderly Pnin and teenage Victor. Pnin has just run upstairs to defenestrate a soccer ball he bought for the boy when the artistic Victor, not knowing about the gift, expressed a dislike for sports.
The boy artist has romantic fantasies about Russia, gained from movies and books. He will be introduced, I speculate, to more Russian fantasies by Pnin, for when you have been away for so long you have certain ideas about the Old Country that people living there cannot recognize but will dispute. They claim the authority of experience. You have only your claims of the imagination.
Jee Leong Koh
March 21, 2019
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