Duplicity

How does one reconcile libertine skepticism with hopeless romanticism? Can the two exist in one person? It is like believing in God and being an avid New Yorker. It is being bipolar because you're bi-ethical. I wonder if they'll start medicating.

I grew up in proper New York fashion. I went to politically correct schools with equally vague value systems. The education was superior and the bias was the right one and I never stopped to question the loss of identity in the face of multiculturalism.

During the summer after my freshman year of college, my appendix ruptured and I spent 21 days in the hospital. As my family paced up and down the halls, doctors counseled them with unconvincing percentages. One evening, almost two weeks into a sojourn clouded by morphine, one of the NYU Rabbis came to visit me. He spoke about God and abstract things. He spoke about holding on. After he left, the percentages changed.

The 21 days that I spent in the hospital coincided with the 21 saddest days of the Jewish calendar, often referred to as the "three weeks". I had always been aware of my religion, but after that summer, I began to understand faith and spirituality.

But I am not faith alone. I am also defined by this city. I am the streets of New York. I am the fixture on the corner of Waverly and Broadway with exceptionally bleary eyes and a sign asking for kindness. I am the arch in Washington Square Park, watching 1950 bohemianize into hipster gentrified illusion and rebel against itself.  I am the march for peace and the protest for sovereignty. I am McCarthy vs. McCarthy. I am platforms vs. connotations. I am binary against binary.

And I believe in a book.